Nice!
Just read some good things about the Phison A2 120SE amp.
Good catch!

the dimensions in inches are 18x23x10. then we are about 32 square meters

Ah, OK. A room of 32 SQUARE meters is much, much, much better than 32 CUBIC meters. That is a wonderful room size for Canterbury or even larger (Westminster)! No worries of overloading the room.

As an amplifier I have both a mcintosh mc501 and an audio innovations 1000. Which of the two could be better? I seem to understand that canterburys are bad beasts for amps.

I couldn't say as I don't have experience with either of your amps. Both look nice! It will depend on your listening habits & preferences. Based on my experience last weekend I'd suggest you also try (if arrangeable) a SS amp without output transformers (autoformers in the case of McIntosh). If I had to guess/bet I'd still pick the McIntosh of the two, since I like lots of good clean power. But if you wanted to say focus your listening on slower music with lushest possible vocals, the 50W tube amp might be preferred.

From what I understand you got the S.E. exactly like mine.
What differences did you find between Caterbury SE and Ken SE.
You advise me to switch speakers from Ken to Canterbury. Do you find that the Canterburys are difficult to manage and demanding when it comes to amplifiers?

With the Kensington SE, I was heavily choosing warmer balanced upstream gear & tubes (e.g. RCA, Mullards). This was to even out the balance of its treble vs. bass in my room. With the Canterbury SE it was almost the opposite; I went towards more neutral, highly detailed, even slightly bright gear (e.g. Mazda silver plates). When you do get it right with Canterbury, it will reward you with a more powerful, lifelike sound and image size than the Kensington can offer. BUT I did seem to spend more time chasing "just right" system balance.

I now wish I'd experimented more with amps when I had the Canterbury SE. All I ever ran on those was Rogue Apollo high power tube amps. It sounded great - they're good amps but now I find better options. And it's inevitably clear now on the GR, that different amps can result in very different presentations for the Canterbury! The 50 Watt tube amp should probably be very very lush on Canterbury SE. It might sound great, but will be very much warmer than neutral. That's why McIntosh option would be intriguing to me; that might be a great neutral-ish amp to pair. The GR are more detailed/neutral than the SE model and even here on GR I have recently found myself preferring a less warm / more detailed SS amp!

I don't think the Canterbury are necessary demanding of an amp with regards to power, it's just that amp pairings to them are very sensitive towards system balance/matching and personal preferences.

Another 4 1/2 months on, what's your opinion about the Phison with the GRs, or any other SS amp, compared to your VAC amps?

I've had my GRs for just over a year now (made my final 12-month mortgage payment last month!), and started them off with a pair of 140 watt CJ Premier 12s, then a 30 watt Class A SS Accuphase integrated, then an older 220 watt B&K, and for the last seven months, a pair of 15 watt Quad II Classics.

I haven't tried other SS amps with these speakers, unfortunately. The Phison actually sounds more tube-like than the Rogue Apollo Dark tube monoblocks. I had the VAC amps out for loan for some months; just now got them back for more comparisons with a fresh perspective after using the Phison almost exclusively in that time. Yeah, now I remember the VACs are really nice lol. I'm not ready to sell them, for sure. That said, I have hooked them up a few times this year and was able to quite enjoy the sessions for a while before the "put the Phison back in" voice became overwhelming :)

The VAC 200iQ mono amps are absolute king of the midrange. They simply sound the most lifelike and palpable with vocals and instruments that live in the midrange. The Phison midrange is excellent, but can't match the VACs here. The Rogue falls behind both the VACs and Phison - a little bit dry in comparison.

The VAC monos have amazing macrodynamics. The Rogue, with their ridiculous power reserves, actually CAN keep up here. The Phison single stereo amp falls a little bit behind here.

The Phison absolutely crushes everything else in microdynamics, speed, and detail. It keeps up with hard rock and heavy metal - anything fast and complex - better than anything I've ever heard. The separation and clarity of details is astounding. Some recordings you might have thought sucked are actually amazing on this amp! The Rogue can keep up pretty well, but the Phison bests it. The VAC starts to blur details in a relatively non-offensive manner, but noticeable nonetheless.

The VAC has a "beautiful" voicing. The Phison has a "pleasing" voicing. The Rogue has a neutral / dry voicing (hot-biasing and NOS small tubes helps but doesn't fully mitigate this). Both the VACs and Phison project an equally 3D, deep sonic image. The Rogue is more 2D. The Rogue cannot beat both the VACs and the Phison and any one thing, though it roughly ties the VACs for 1st place in macrodynamics. And it's pretty much 3rd place in everything else lol.

The Phison pairs best with a Koetsu Platinum cartridge (lush but very fast when called for), and also matches superbly with a top Benz (similar to Koetsu but a bit less plump sounding). With a clean modern digital source, the VACs are probably generally a better match. I only got to hear the digital hookup in a friend's system. I only play vinyl in mine.

I now have 2 Phison amps. Bridging to mono was not as enjoyable as a single stereo amp. Biwiring in vertical or horizontal configurations also (surprisingly) ended up not being as good as one amp. I have a sneaking suspicion one of these amps may have something weird going on e.g. output wiring out of phase etc - that would prevent the 2 amps from working well together. All of my above comparisons are with the known "good" stereo Phison amp, alone. IF I could get better results from 2, it would be quite something to behold. I'm happy enough with one good Phison (which I will never sell). The problem now is I'll have the urge to swap in the VACs for some material, and Phison for others...

Very informative reply, thanks!

I have read a high percentage of comments, of the relatively few there are, saying the GR edition of the Canterbury was designed for SS. Now, none of them said they heard it from a Tannoy engineer or company rep, so it may be just speculation.

However, you're the first and only I've seen who's detailed his experiences using both tube and SS with the GRs, the majority being tubes.

My Canterburys are in a 16' x 24' guest room on the short wall. Even with the 15 watt Quads, they go plenty loud and start overloading the room fairly quickly. As noted by the Stereophile review, the only shortcoming I really notice with the Quads is a slightly softened and looser bottom end.

Sticking with tubes, a bit of research has led me to considering the Radford STA25 or Quicksilver Mid Monos. A bit more power, a bit more damping factor. Not too tight of a grip, and just one pair of tubes per channel. The rationale for both is the numerous opinions that 15" DCs like a bit of freedom, and I think the added complexity of paralleled output tubes takes something away from the purity of signal.

The best SS amp I currently have is my 20-yr-old B&K 2220 over-achiever, but for some reason, my main tube pre doesn't like any of my three SS amps, setting up what I think is a ground-loop hum. Until that's addressed, it's not a fair comparison.

Having read a lot about your journey regarding your room size and listening SPLs, we may be on slightly different paths, but I think we're going in the same basic direction.