Try the Decware SE84UFO25 25th anniversary amp 2.3 watts per channel or 6 watts mono, or you could try the Decware Mini Torrii 4 watts per channel. Lifetime Warranty
I have a Decware 25th Anniversary Zen Triode, the pimped version with V-Cap CuTF and stepped attenuators. I absolutely love it. Having said that, I may not have heard it at its full potential.
I'm saying this because so far, I've heard it with Acapella Fidelio, Boenicke W22, EJ Jordan exponential horn, hORNS Universum, Odeon La Bohème, and a pair of my own speakers, and have come to the conclusion that a) nominal sensitivity ratings don't tell the whole story, and/or b) (almost) everybody lies.
I've always loved low-powered amplifiers, single-ended triodes in particular, since I heard a number of Altec, RCA and WE setups in my now seemingly distant youth, and since then in a number of other systems spanning the whole range from pretty nice to spectacular.
The SE84UFO25 uses triode-wired pentodes as output tubes, EL84 or, as per Steve Deckert, the Russian 6P15P-EV. The reason I was curious about getting one was that this is the only amp I've ever seen that uses a voltage regulator tube each for every audio tube, plus tube rectifier (there are other amps that use VR tubes for input and/or driver tubes, from Decware, Lamm etc., but none that I know of that does for all including the output tubes).
What this does is it sounds as if running on battery power, with a sound that "carries" at low level unlike any amp I've owned or tried. I'll admit I primarily bought it hoping it would be fun for late-night listening, and indeed it has, in spades, what I love most about low-powered amps: that intimate, emotional connection to the music.
It does this in a balanced and harmonious, transparent, not particularly "tubey", let alone colored fashion, depending on the tubes used it also sounds convincingly large-scaled and impactful. It does walk that fine line of never sounding bright or harsh which I love about tube gear, though.
The problem is one might wrongly conclude it's all that or near useless - depending on the speaker one pairs it with. The nominal sensitivity rating has so far proven to be an inadequate indicator of whether a combination is going to produce that intimate, emotional "magic" it is capable of.
Depending on the speaker used, it'll sound dynamically flat, not to mention start compressing macro dynamics well before it runs out of juice (it'll do so visibly, i.e. once the 0A3 voltage regulator tubes start sagging, they start flickering to e.g. the bass line in the music - something I've only seen them do once, with Boenicke's W22 speakers in an admittedly large room, but then, because only one VR tube would do this, Steve Deckert recommended I replace the 0A3s, which I subsequently did with even older NOS RCA that make the amp sound even more powerful).
I'm saying "even more powerful" because that's what "little Ms D", as Christoph fondly calls it, sounds like at its best. With my speakers, the sheer volume and density of the sound, soundstage and scale, not to mention powerful and textured bass, are nothing short of amazing (the bass is only fractionally less tight than with Spectral solid-stage amplification on the same speakers).
Now, the speakers it synergizes with best are currently placed in a very small room, plus they're extremely easy to drive, by which I mean, no anomalies such as steep electrical phase angles, no sudden impedance dips, none of those problems speaker designers wisely forget to mention…
As a matter of fact, Steve Deckert might not have recommended using this amp with speakers that only offer 91.5dB sensitivity, but when I told him I built and measured them myself, that the drivers are time-aligned, using my own phase-coherent filters, in short, that this isn't about some "nominal" sensitivity rating spotted in some manufacturer's sales ad blurb, but an actual calibrated 2.83V/1m measurement, he immediately gave his thumbs up.
It's by far the least expensive component in this system, literally, the interconnects used with it cost more, but doesn't at all seem out of place. It performs beautifully, a technically minimalistic, wonderfully direct communicator of music, atmosphere and emotion. Maybe my favorite tube compliment includes the Reflektor 6N23P Single Wire Silver Shield from 1975 as input/driver with a Miniwatt GZ34 Metal Base rectifier from 1957, alternatively Shuguang GZ480. Mind you, I'm not just playing chamber music, but symphonic, church organ, and it's occasionally freaked me out flooding the room with bass, seemingly shaking the foundations with music such as Max Richter's
Sleep (non-fatiguing listened to complete, the whole eight and a half hours, a positively uplifting experience). All this without ever showing signs of output transformer saturation of e.g. my 211 amp driving the Jordan horns.
Christoph liked the little "Deckie" quite well with his Universums, a combination I'd not recommend, especially not in a room that size, even though it really only hinted at macro-dynamic "flattening" with some music and not all (but then, what's the point?). It didn't do particularly well with the Boenicke W22, nor the Odeon La Bohème, both of which are touted "high-sensitivity" speakers. The combination with the EJ Jordan resulted in way too much bass, and the most unlikely combination, with the Acapella Fidelio, another remarkably time- and phase-coherent speaker, works well up to a point, that is beautifully, if only at low to medium volume level.
Should perhaps mention it's really another power amp with input attenuators, that depending on the source component may or may not profit from using a preamp. As usual, V-Cap Elite Reference coupling caps as an option are not for the impatient, in dire need of 400-600 hours burn-in to sound at their best (having said that, they don't sound nowhere as "vile" during this time as Steve Deckert repeatedly warned me, on the contrary, the same caps seemed to take rather longer, starting out sounding analytically dry, elsewhere, such as in the Amplifon SET42, where they're also an available and, ultimately after a seemingly endless wait, highly recommended option).
If there's anything I've learnt from this journey, then to refrain from jumping to conclusions, as in trying to make so-called educated guesses as to which combinations may or may not work synergistically using such a flea-watt amp. If there's anything that I know doesn't work, that's
it.
Greetings from Switzerland, David.
