My family room:
Boston Acoustic HD-10s for front
B/A HD-5's for surround
B/A 525(?) for center
Definitive S/W, from the OLD days!
Pioneer Elite Receiver
Nakamichi Dragon cassette deck
Rega Turntable
Sony PS3 for Blu-ray, DVD, CD, and DLHP client.

For the pool deck:
B/A Voyager 6 outdoor speakers.
Dynaco 200wpch power amp
NAD pre-amp
Nakamichi RX-303 unidirectional autoreverse cassette deck
no-name CD changer

My stereo setup in my rec room is:
1.Hitachi-HT-1 turntable
2.Technics-ST-2780 tuner
3.Hitachi-HA-270 amp
4.Nikko-NCD-250QR CD player
5.TechnicsSL-P667 CD player
6.JVC-SP458K tower speakers with a pair of stamped iron Optimus-PRD X44AV satellite speakers that I have wired to go up to the living room.These little speakers are only little 2-way iron boxes about 8" high but pump out sound that would rival any really good 3-way tower speakers.BTW they are made by Tandy(Radio Shack- or The Source in Canada)
In the living room I have a 6:1 Koss home theatre system and in my bedroom where I keep my 400+ classical CDS I have a 200 CD Kenwood CD323VX CD player loaded with nothing but Mozart and that's only hooked up to my Sirius boombox which despite its size sounds incredible.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

WOW, that is some serious gear right there, nice one. I once auditioned the Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista at home for a week and it was awesome, your system must be mind blowing...!!!

Whoa! Did I read that right? Up to $24,000 for a power amp? I know I can't hear the difference between that and a Class D ICE amp. If you can then all power to you and enjoy!

BTW, I have seen power amps with volume controls. Crown made one--a housemate had it--and my pool amp, a Dynaco ST400, has a VC for each channel.

Funny, I'm, using S/S but I really love the sound of tube stereo. Haven't used them much, though, since a Dynaco Mark III (one of a pair of old mono-blocks) started smoking badly and set off the smoke detector on Thanksgiving, no less! Luckily, it was a bad transformer and didn't catch fire, but it sure smoked! It was a nice sounding system: Nak deck, Dynaco PAT-4 preamp, large Advent speakers.

There just has to be a tube somewhere in the signal path. That's the reason why I use that Cayin CDP, it has a tube in the output stage. The rest is S/S (MOSFET Class A).

Cheers

David

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"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc...and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."

I've never played with highbreds, always either S/S or tube. It took me a while to get hooked on tubes. IN THEORY, S/S should sound the same, and, for really high end hi-fi, it pretty much does. Yet there's something to tubes...even a small unit.

In my room, I still play an Akai M8 reel with 2x12 cabs from the 60s.

My setup:

Rega P9 Turntable
Rega L/E Apollo CD Player
Exposure Integrated Amplifier
Tannoy Prestige Loudspeakers

For a S/S amp my Hitachi sounds amazingly tubelike and lacks all the sterility of most S/S amps.Some day I hope to luck into a nice 60s or 70s tube amp,they come up every now and then in the local Buy&Sell magazine but of course are often gone minutes after the magazine comes out.I've seen some lovely Marantz etc. tube amps go for a lot cheaper than the sellers realize they're worth.But I got a real deal on my Nikko 5 disc CD player with remote at the local pawn shop for only $40.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

Are these Yorkminsters? Great speakers, I love them Tannoys.

Cheers

David

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"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc...and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."

Gutslinger,
Go on to eBay and look for Dynaco amps. An SCA-35 may run a couple of hundred bucks, is 17.5wpch and is an integrated amp. It may need some cleanup but when brought back to spec it is SWEET! In fact, one of those made me a tube amp convert. I bought it on a whim, wasn't too impressed, but then started playing with it. Replaced a few bad components (fried resistors and dead caps) and WOW! Even with little Boston Acoustic HD-5s my jaw dropped.

Tube Amp Models by Dynaco:
SCA-35 --17.5 wpch integrated (Includes the PAS-2/3 preamp built in)
ST-35 --17.5 wpch power amp
ST-70 -- 35 wpch power amp--The Classic--the Stratocaster of stereo tube amps.
MK II -- 50 watt monoblock
MK III -- 60 watt monoblock (improved MK II)
MK IV -- 35 watt monoblock (half of an ST-70)
MK IV -- 125 watt monoblock

Other SCA-amp models are integrated S/S
Other ST-amp models are S/S power amps
The solid state stuff is really good, but it's not tube.

Preamps:
PAM-1 Mono tube preamp
PAS-2,3,3x Stereo tube preamp.
PAT 4, 5 preamps are s/s.

There are even tube tuners: FM-1 and FM-3

Thanks Yanktar,I'll look into it.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

I had the most exclusive High End Hi Fi System:
Cello Palette, Cello amps , Cello pre-amp from The Man Himself: Mark Levinson
+ all related stuff of the same level from the 80's.
Just sold them (at an even higher price than I bought them) as nobody can now make equipments of such quality. (military grade).
I sold them because of earing problems which prevented me from appreciating the State Of The Art in Hi-Fi
A pity
Before I had Mc Intosh which ruled in the 60's
But I understand that young people are not so much interested; MP3 seems enough for their earing capabilities...

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http://www.guitarmotel.com

Just beautiful.............

Hey, you are welcome. And, if it's an unbuilt kit, it will cost about 5x as much, if not more.

Unbuilt S/S kits are pretty rare but any tube kits that are still unbuilt are even rarer.