Very nice looking setup. I was thinking about the glass front stereo cabinets from back in the day and wondering why we don’t see many now.
Thanks Baldy. I went with the perforated metal but the wife wanted glass… the Ayre power amp gets pretty hot so I wanted as much airflow as possible. She wouldn’t let me get away without side panels either 
@Bob Tell her that like most women she has good taste in furnishings. I would still be using milk crates, cement blocks and boards, and lawn chairs if I did not have my wife of 43 years to guide me out of barbarism. 
Dude I used milk crates and chipboard shelves for a solid 40 years myself. 
Cinder blocks and plywood in college!
Best,
-JP
Milk crates with kitchen shelf liners to dress them up, the wife was creative
Come on guys, let’s be honest. Milk crates == Beer Bottle Cases. We’re all friends here 
In college could only afford Busch but you damn right I splurged on 4 cases of Bud just for the speaker stands!
I still have a bunch (maybe 10 or 12) steel milk crates that I bought from the corner store by paying the deposit fee for them. It was the late '70’s or early '80’s and I think I paid $3 each for them. And yes they may have been a temporary storage for some Miller High Life bottles more than once.
I actually moved the chair forward by about a foot, now at 1.5’ from the LP rack. It sounds better. Listening position is now about 9’ from the spkrs, sound staging is great, I cannot hear sound coming from the spkr itself, just from the stage in the middle. I might DIY more diffusers to be placed behind the spkrs in the summer.
Thank you. Very informative.
Enjoy your systems and awesome listening room.
Which of the reel to reels do you like most. My dad has a couple of UHER (made in Munich, unfortunately this company does not exist anymore and a Revox). All magnificent machines and high end icons of an also fun time.
Killer System! what would the Accuphase replace? the Emitter?
What are your plans for a preamp? the Sr. or just use ASR as pre only? that would be a lot of hardware to not use what by all accounts is a very special amplifier in the ASR…
PS - Really nice space to listen to music in, great light…
Best,
-JP
Nice setup! I’d just not put the one huge ASR power supply case directly under the amp, as it was most probably outsourced exactly for the reason not to do this 
I must admit that a 45w solid state amp with M40.2 sounds like a really bad idea. I’ve used 55w Class A with SHL5+ and it was a fail. I went to the M40.2 UK launch at KJ WestOne and I think they used 350w solid state amps. The minimum specification for the speakers is 35w and that won’t get them close to their potential performance. Alan Shaw accepts that they do need a lot of power to perform at their best.
KJ are probably the leading high-end business in the UK (I understand a lot of their business is international) and stock relatively few brands. Of the Class A brands I’ve heard at their demos a far more appropriate unit might be the Soulution 330 integrated.
https://soulution-audio.com/series3/soulution-330-integrated-amplifier/
It’s 120w into 8 ohms and might be a good starting point.
Accuphase and Harbeth seem like a culture clash to me, but that’s probably just a mental thing
Those heats sinks can’t cover 120W Class A…never. That must be an AB amp.
They claim “high class A operation”, so it’s maybe 2 instead of 1 Watt Class A. I guess not more Class A than the ASR Emitter of adriaan.
You’re thinking in terms of very old technology. Things have moved on. Soulution use a mix of multiple switch mode and linear power supplies. Even so the units are large, this is 430 x 490 deep.
The 330 is the baby of the range. The 5 and 7 series are more powerful and much more expensive.
It’s all against the Harbeth philosophy of using expensive low powered amps, in fact expensive amps full stop. Even so, the 330 costs quite a bit more than the speakers.
The key point is that Harbeth still need a pretty meaty amplifier to get the speed and dynamics that they are capable and 48w does not meet that bill. A few years back Harbeth’s main dealer in Germany got a lot of grief because he insisted that Harbeth were at their best with an Tim de Pavaracini’s EAR Yoshino V12, which is as good a Class A 50w valve amp as you can get from one of the best audio engineers out there. It just isn’t enough power. Try bassoon or baritone sax and I reckon any listener will be very disappointed compared to a $1,500 150w amplifier.
I don’t doubt anything except your first two sentences, which are about the initial topic. Indeed I don’t know of a concept to deliver 120W pure Class A from such an amp and I’m quite sure there is none.
Nothing against this amp possibly suited well with the Harbeth…but it’s never 120W pure Class A (this would be what I and probably adriaan meant with Class A (= pure Class A)). Solution is not even claiming it’s full class A.
The most important thing to remember when you’re using beer crates is that as you empty it the soundstage will gradually diminish, so it’s imperative to keep re-filling it. Bottles, rather than cans will smooth out the upper upper frequencies.
The problem being you can only get beer crates from behind pubs, all of which are now closed. Majestic deliver in boxes and they won’t take the strain. There’s a gap in the market for audiophile crates.