[dusk]

I'm looking for a tube amp that has a very warm sound that can also drive Zu bookshelf speakers.  I heard good things about Rogue, and I was also looking at the WA5.  I'm not sure if the WA5 will have the power I need.  Has anyone here used either of these amps or can recommend a good tube amp under $5K that can perform double duty as speaker/headphone amp?

 

[JamieMcC]

  I'm looking for a tube amp that has a very warm sound that can also drive Zu bookshelf speakers.  I heard good things about Rogue, and I was also looking at the WA5.  I'm not sure if the WA5 will have the power I need.  Has anyone here used either of these amps or can recommend a good tube amp under $5K that can perform double duty as speaker/headphone amp?

 
I would be happy to recommend the Bottlehead Sex it is both a excellent headphone amp and will drive efficient speakers. I use mine with some Fostex FX120 full range drivers in a custom Fonken speaker enclosure the FX120 have a sensitivity rating of 89dB and the Sex's 2 watt output is easily capable of driving my misses out of the room (14x12) . It is a very capable amp that sound superb with speakers or headphones (I use Beyer T1 and HD800).
 
The headphone out is hard wired to the speaker taps so you get the full 2W available for those harder to drive headphones there is also output Impedance Switching option 4,8,16 and 32 ohms, and with the optional OT-3 transformer the choices are 16,32,64 and 128 ohms (I use 8 ohms).
 
The amp also responds very well to some inexpensive modifications.
 
Review here, its after the Crack review
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/683012/bottlehead-amplifier-discussion-comparison-thread-crack-sex-mainline
 
Bottlehead Sex product page
 
http://bottlehead.com/?product=single-ended-experimenters-kit-2-1-for-headphones-sensitive-speakers

 

[JamieMcC]

You might also like to take a look at Decware
 
http://www.decware.com/newsite/homepage.html