Looking for bass amplifier recommendations

[bumpy]

Hi

I am powering the 15inch drivers on my open baffles with their own dedicated amplifier at frequencies below 200hz. They are Altec 416B 8 ohm 65 year old vintage drivers, which are very rare and therefore currently reach about £1000 a pair. Being very sensitive they are designed to only tolerate a maximum of 35 watts.

I had a very unhappy experience, by mistake, feeding similarly sensitive Saba Greencones with 1000watts of power and launching the paper cones into orbit with an explosion and a shower of sparks.

So you can understand why I am nervous to connect overpowered amps to the Altecs.

Bottom line is, I would like a lowish powered amp that delivers the best solid and articulate bass. Any suggestion valve or solid state. Used equipment is fine.

[Pigmy Pony]

What about one of those little chip amps that only make about 10 watts or so? They are cheap as chips if you pardon the pun, so not much lost if it doesn't work out.

Shame you are not close to me - I have an Audion Silver Night 300b stereo, which outputs 7W per channel. It's not doing anything at the mo, so you'd be welcome to borrow it and see how that sort of thing fares.

[bumpy]

Thanks PP. Most valve amps I have used generally struggle with low bass requiring expensive or very heavyweight output transformers, but I am always interested to hear others experience. Damping factor also seems important when controlling a big driver.

[Blackdog]

What you don't want is to have too little power, and run the amp near its limits consistently. That may cause the amp to overheat, fail, and destroy the voice coils. Bass below 200hz uses more power than the rest of the frequency spectrum combined. That said you will probably be fine with 35 to 50 watts unless you like disco levels.
I would also look for something with a reputation for rock sold reliability, and possibly has good DC offset protection.
A Bryston 2BLP comes to mind. Old design, and may need some work, but inexpensive, reliable and about the right power.

[Puffin]

The Crown PA range of ClassD amps have had good reviews from the "Audiophile" community and they do a range of power outputs at different prices.

https://www.thomann.de/gb/crown_power_amplifiers.html

[Stryder5]

I have a Parasound Z amp v2 IIRC 30 watts/channel, gain control on rear, auto switch on.

Gary

[bumpy]

The Crown PA range of ClassD amps have had good reviews from the "Audiophile" community and they do a range of power outputs at different prices.

https://www.thomann.de/gb/crown_power_amplifiers.html

Nice amp, but unfortunately most of those approach too high output.

[bumpy]

What you don't want is to have too little power, and run the amp near its limits consistently. That may cause the amp to overheat, fail, and destroy the voice coils. Bass below 200hz uses more power than the rest of the frequency spectrum combined. That said you will probably be fine with 35 to 50 watts unless you like disco levels.
I would also look for something with a reputation for rock sold reliability, and possibly has good DC offset protection.
A Bryston 2BLP comes to mind. Old design, and may need some work, but inexpensive, reliable and about the right power.

These Bryston amps look very interesting but are not very plentiful in the UK. A used version of the 2BLP is currently just under a grand - not so inexpensive here. I read they come with a 20 year guarantee.

[bumpy]

How do others feel about valve amps dedicated to low frequencies, My experience with SETs is that this is not their best territory, but what about tetrodes, pentodes, push, pull, parallel etc etc?

[Ali Tait]

A chip amp would be a good choice. High damping factor so well suited for this application. I use a 3000w DSP Behringer to drive the 18” bass cones on my Bastanis.