Tampa Florida Checking In My Brothers

I'm so glad to find this forum. I'm just on the outskirts of Tampa but lived in the heart of Tampa most of my life. I'm looking forward to getting to know all of you in this forum. I'm a member of the "Suncoast Audiophile Society".

Klipsch powered by Dynaco VTA ST-120 but I'm in the process of upgrading speakers to Monolith III (panels only) with separate JBL subwoofer.

Best Regards,
Eddie

Welcome Eddie!

Welcome aboard !

Hi there Eddie! Welcome to the Tampa Bay ML contingent! :rocker:

That's quite a step up from the Klipsch! Hope you don't plan on trying to drive them with your Dynaco!

Looking forward to hearing more about your Monolithic journey!

Welcome Eddie good to have another Tampa-ite here.
Technically I'm north of Tampa also, Wesley Chapel.
I look forward to hearing some Monoliths. Which Klipsch are you currently running in your system.

Eddie, welcome......... please, don't tell us your last name is 'Munster' !

Wesley Chapel is where I'm at Brad.
I'm upgrading from Klipsch Synergy SB-2. The Dynaco ST120 is so good that it makes those cheap bookshelves sound great. I know some folks using a Dynaco ST70 on Martin Logan SL3's and they sound great (the ST70 is 35 watts per channel). The ST120 is 60 watts per channel and it will only drive the Monolith III panels with an active crossover at around 150Hz (no woofer on the ST120). The woofer will have solid state amp so I'm sure the ST120 will be sufficient for the panels only.

Sleepysurf, have you tried the ST120 on the Monolith III panels only...or something similar that makes you feel that it won't work out? I'd definitely be interested in hearing about your experience with that.

kind thanks,
Eddie

eddiegnz1 said:

...I know some folks using a Dynaco ST70 on Martin Logan SL3's and they sound great (the ST70 is 35 watts per channel). The ST120 is 60 watts per channel and it will only drive the Monolith III panels with an active crossover at around 150Hz (no woofer on the ST120). The woofer will have solid state amp so I'm sure the ST120 will be sufficient for the panels only.

Sleepysurf, have you tried the ST120 on the Monolith III panels only...or something similar that makes you feel that it won't work out? I'd definitely be interested in hearing about your experience with that...

Click to expand...

Eddie, I'm just surmising that you'd get better dynamics with a higher powered amp (SS or tube). Brad's CLS panels are probably similar to the Monolith's, and he uses 200W ARC monoblocks. I'll let others (like JonFo) with actual Monolith experience chime in with their perspectives.

(BTW, I'm Alan from SAS!)

LOL, Alan, how cool is that...to find you in this forum. I didn't know you were a Martin Logan guy. Hopefully I'll get to come over to your place to hear your ML's someday. And I'd love to hear Brad's ML as well. Hey, is Brad in SAS too?

The CLS go down to about 35 Hz so they must have an amp that delivers lots of watts. There are two reasons why I'm convinced that the 60 watts per channel from my tubes will be sufficient for the Monolith III panels (I guess I could be wrong).

1) the tube amplifier will not have to use any of it's resources to produce anything below 125Hz which makes the amp seem much much stronger from 125Hz and up because one hundred percent of the amplifiers muscles will be allocated to frequencies above 125Hz. With an active crossover, I will also test a high pass of 150Hz for the Monolith III....because my subwoofer can play well from 150Hz down to 24Hz.

2) the Monolith III panel doesn't have the bass sections that are found in the CLS panels so they are easier to drive than CLS.

Well, anyway Alan, I'll catch up with you at our meeting this week. Looking forward to it.