SET amp owners thread

Hi Morricab,
I love my Horning Eufrodite Ellipse speakers. They sound very natural with beautiful tone and timbre and throw a huge soundstage with very good imaging. With these speakers you stop analyzing the sound and just enjoy the music, which it's all about.
I also use a First Watt SIT-3 amp which sounds excellent too, but i'm partial to my 300b's!
 
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Just received new Druid VI
With my CAT JL5 they play nice but with the single-ended NAF 845 its magic!
Very revealing and engaging, huge sounsdstage and tight bass
Interesting, i read in reviews that they should be toed in but not with my room. Ok it has 5 corners :)
 
Olivier, you have the Druid VI? Long term Zu enthusiast here, running Definitions 2 from 2008 to 2012 and Definitions 4, heavily modded, from 2012 to present day. Can you relay a little more about their sound, and what you traded up from?
 
Running 70W 211s on my Zus.
 
What 845 tube do you use?
 
i do have a CAT JL5 and i on my opinion the NAF sound better than the 100 hp of the CAT with the zus, more elegant and bigger.
But i think i will try the Atmas, too, as i like a very fast, engaging sound
I used the 845 B and then the Psvane 845-T-MII/2 which are significant better. But now they blew and i am thinking of ACME 845 but actually i don´t know if they are a direct substitute?
For 5867 i use Valvo E182CC green label and for ECC83 the Psvane 12AX7-T-MII/2, which are the most engaging i tested so far.

My other setup is TAD CR1 with Bi Amping CAT and Nordost 700 WPC. So totally different and that´s what i intended. The TADs do have much more bass pressure but i love the glance of single-ended.
Well the Zus do need some time but what i can report now is:

Coming form Reference 3A CeCapo it is not really a fair comparison.
These are my first Zus so i can´t compare to former models.

Using the NAF 845 on both the Zus are much more well balanced and do have deeper bass (no wonder)
The Reference 3A is very engaging in the mids and their mids are a tad forward. Not so with the Zus.
With the NAF the Zus are engaging but not harsh.
Voices´s soundstage is much bigger than with my other setup. But can be cause of my room, about 36 m2, 5 corners and 3.5 height. I sit about 3m from the speakers and the Zus are higher than the CR1
Bass is thight and deep but can´t be as powerful as CR1 cause of different concept but doesn´t have to be in my opinion.
In my room it is better not to toe them in, then the soundstage is bigger and details are clearer.
A really good speaker running single-ended amps

I would like to try a PSET 2A3 but think they will be too weak for bass

olivier
 
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Just received new Druid VI
With my CAT JL5 they play nice but with the single-ended NAF 845 its magic!
Very revealing and engaging, huge sounsdstage and tight bass
Interesting, i read in reviews that they should be toed in but not with my room. Ok it has 5 corners :)
It's worth putting some effort into adjusting the floor-to-plinth gap on the Druid 6, to optimize the bass, and getting that done also has some more subtle effects on midrange and soundstaging, due to the driver-to-room acoustic impedance matching that the Griewe principle in Druids performs.

You will find significant differences in various 845 tubes, especially in SET topology, with Druid 6. It is highly resolving and lays bare power tube differences. If your amp has 5687 driver tubes, see if you can find Bendix 6900 to sub. The Bendix 6900 was designed for ICBM use, so it has a Nonex (non-expansion) glass envelope, and the internal structure is designed to withstand 500Gs of force. It is a 10,000+ hours tube, nearly indestructible except by hammer, and in place of an electrically-similar 5687 gives most SET amps a more transparent, vivid, projecting sound. Otherwise, if you stick with the 5687, NOS Tung Sol and Raytheon are splendid.

Toe-in for Druid 6 is much shallower than with prior Druids and there are many rooms where no toe-in whatsoever is needed. The D6 has less directionality than any prior Druid, and is the first Druid to approach (but doesn't equal) the spatial scale of the dual-FRD Definition. So particularly in your 5-corners room, it seems sensible that a straight-ahead projection works well for you. You just essentially have to toe-in a bit and then incrementally reduce toe-in until the center of the soundstage gets a hole torn in it. If that doesn't happen before you get to firing the drivers straightaway, then there you have it.

You can run Druid 6 on 2w 45 SET amps, but generally they are snappiest and best in the 15w - 50w range, depending on room and listener expectations. ~20w seems a threshold for excitement, but low power p-p amps can be an exception. I have a pair of custom 2a3 p-p monoblocks I sometimes use on D6 @ 13w that are both relaxed and energetic, and still able to throw a full symphony into the room. Quad II monoblocks sound particularly great on Druids because an anomaly of the Quad II is that if you run the standard 8 ohm transformer taps into the 16 ohms Druid6, the Q2 peak output is only marginally reduced (21.5w down to ~18.5w) but the Class A output is 14.25w! Otherwise, for 300B PSET or P-P, 845 SET, or single-ended pentode circuits like KT150 SEP or EL156 SEP, ~20w+ gives shove and bloom. The 16 ohms load also tames many solid state amps, so options like the 47 Labs Gaincard, M2Tech Crosby and various First Watt kitchen table amps from Nelson Pass become seriously credible.

Phil
 
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It’d be great to get some videos of your setup Phil, would be good to hear the differences between all these amps and valves on your Zus.
 
Phil,
thanks for your reply and the suggestions. i was looking for Bendix some years ago but never found them...
And thanks for your posts regarding Druid VI, it was very helpful in my acquisition process :)
i would like to add the 5867 RCA as they make nice timbre...but the Valvo are more engaging.
Yes i agree that changing amps will be great fun with the Druids as they are really engaging adn resolving!
i think one of the last presentations have been wit Pass amp but i would like to stick with tubes...
 
Can't wait to hear your impressions.

And thanks for the photo!
Thanks Duke.

Very early impressions before break-in and finding the best positioning is that the sound is big! They really take control of the room and plant the listener in the soundfield. I've always had problems with my room: bass issues and image-shift to the left but these speakers just seem to dominate the room into submission.
I am sitting nearfield. I'm 2.5m from each speaker and they are 2.5m apart. The toe-in is directly at me. An equilateral triangle. The speakers are 2m out from the front wall.
 
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Thanks Duke.

Very early impressions before break-in and finding the best positioning is that the sound is big! They really take control of the room and plant the listener in the soundfield. I've always had problems with my room: bass issues and image-shift to the left but these speakers just seem to dominate the room into submission.
I am sitting nearfield. I'm 2.5m from each speaker and they are 2.5m apart. The toe-in is directly at me. An equilateral triangle. The speakers are 2m out from the front wall.
And you can really feel the sound in a physical way. When a guitar is strummed you don't just hear it or see the image of it -- you feel it like a sort of pressure or weight.
 
Thanks Duke.

Very early impressions before break-in and finding the best positioning is that the sound is big! They really take control of the room and plant the listener in the soundfield. I've always had problems with my room: bass issues and image-shift to the left but these speakers just seem to dominate the room into submission.
I am sitting nearfield. I'm 2.5m from each speaker and they are 2.5m apart. The toe-in is directly at me. An equilateral triangle. The speakers are 2m out from the front wall.

That is the beauty of horn speaker with their directional radiation: less reflections from the room :cool:
And sitting in the near-field certainly also helps minimize the room interactions ;)
I'm very glad you like them :D
 
That is the beauty of horn speaker with their directional radiation: less reflections from the room :cool:
And sitting in the near-field certainly also helps minimize the room interactions ;)
I'm very glad you like them :D
Yes, that is more accurate: it takes the room out of the equation rather than dominates it into submission.
Another set of qualities are those I heard with the smaller Odeon No. 28. Things never seem to get peaky, strained, hard, contracted, tight, or harsh. Everything always seems under control and relaxed. It's like the whole system really never breaks a sweat.
 
Yes, that is more accurate: it takes the room out of the equation rather than dominates it into submission.
Another set of qualities are those I heard with the smaller Odeon No. 28. Things never seem to get peaky, strained, hard, contracted, tight, or harsh. Everything always seems under control and relaxed. It's like the whole system really never breaks a sweat.

You use an Allnic A-6000 with 50 watts per channel to drive your Odeon 33, right?
I guess those 50 watts are easily more than enough.
Have you tried something lower watt as well or do you intend to do so?
 
You use an Allnic A-6000 with 50 watts per channel to drive your Odeon 33, right?
I guess those 50 watts are easily more than enough.
Have you tried something lower watt as well or do you intend to do so?
Yes, that's correct, the Allnic A-6000. I haven't tried anything lower but I'm interested in hearing a 300B SET amp with the speakers for sure.
You also use a 50w (or 60w) 300B PSET with your Odeons, is that correct?
My guess is that the woofers of the 33 and 38 would perform better with the 50w as opposed to the 8w(?)
I recall morricab and others recommending a minimum of 20w for the big Odeons.
 

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