Pharmaboy
Headphoneus Supremus
I would also give a shout-out for one of the great sonic overachievers, the humble Woo WA3. It's compact, has just 3 tubes (2 input tubes and 1 power tubes), and on paper has a modest power output. But IRL use, the WA3 has way more than enough power for anything I try with it.Matt, one option for a more “budget” OTL could be a pre-owned Woo Audio WA2 and getting top-shelf tubes for it.
The WA2 scales REALLY well with better tubes and sounds wonderful with ZMF DD headphones.
It would cost you about $1800-2000 to do that, with the option to upgrade the fuse and power cable if that’s something you’d want to do later.
Not cheap per se, but a bit less that the DecWare, and with excellent quality and results sonically.
With the right tubes (in my case, a pair of Brimar CV455s* on adapters + a Tung Sol 5998 for power), you get a very healthy dose of OTL magic with ZMF high impedance dynamics.
* @jonathan c turned me on to these--really special tubes