That's a great price Todd. I friend of mine bought them for me in Germany and I paid $515. I would rather give the money to Headroom but at the time your price ($1100) was a bit steep. On the subject of the amp, I listened to the K1000 at the Hilton show in NYC with the ASL AQ-1005 DTI and liked them. The problem here is two-fold. First the AQ-1005 DTI goes for a cool $1699. Then, driving the AKGs even from the 16 Ohms tap the impedance that the primary sees is huge, not a nice thing for the output Stage. Then browsing the
www.audioasylum.com SET forum I found a post for another ASL amp, the MG-mini300DT at
www.audiooasis.com for $595. Not bad at all but has only and 8 Ohm tap. Knowing that Mr. Joseph Lau, the designer of the ASLs, frequents audioasylum I emailed him. He had the same concerns about the amps driving the K1000. He said that they can make a special order amp with a custom made output transformer. The only problem is that it will take 3 months after the order is placed with a distributor. The other thing that he said is to consider the MG-Head. Driving the K1000 from the high impedance output it can produce 500mW, which with the 74 db/mW sensitivity of the AKGs will give 101 db SPL...food for thought!
Todd, did you try the AKGs with the MGHead at all? I'm thinking of getting the MG-Head anyway, I have also the HD-600 that I can drive with it until the three months go by.
So far I love the K1000s, even without a proper amp to drive them. It's not only the sound but the comfort. It's great to have something that doesn't cover or touch your ears. But I still love my HD-600.
Anybody else with info on driving the K1000s, especially with tube amps?