I live in the rainforest on the north shore of Maui, about twice as far as you do from Decware and have had great interaction and support from this forum and the company. I am about to order an amp and am building their HDT speakers from a kit-lots of help from this web location. The boonies are no hindrance to web users and I suspect your lucid questions will beget equal replies.    aloha,    mike

I don't own a Tori but have some experience with 6550/KT88 tubes. The Genelex gold lion brand are the holy grail in most amps and probably would be in the Tori, price is staggering but if you want the best......

I have not tried the new issue Genelex 6550/KT88 but have used the reissue El34 & EL84 and found them surprisingly good I may even rank them up there with my second choice the more affordable NOS GE or Sylvania tubes.

Third choice would be SED Winged C. Many of the manufacturers use this tube in their amps. I have used a set in an Audio Research D76 to my satisfaction.

For rectifiers I give the edge to Mullard GZ34 or Mazda 5Y3GT, I have used Mazda so long I may have a bias, they are rugged and I can't fault the sound.

Kim,

Welcome to the waiting for the Torii II club!

I bet that this amp will work great with your speakers.  Eager to hear impressions when you have the system set up.

Received my Torii MK II Thursday morning and have had an absolutely delightful first day with the amplifier. Was nice to hear my wife say ‘Gee that’s pretty’ as I set the tubes in the sockets. After firing it up and waiting about 20 minutes we dropped in the first well known CD. My gosh we both sat there in awe. Amazing! As I stated in an email to Stone Deaf I am happy the crew at Decware are able to work with and realized their passion and am totally pleased as a customer to share in the experience. I have not had this much satisfaction with a purchase in a long while.

Even being new out of the box this amp performed close to my old VTL MB450’s (much more expensive) but pluses all over the place. Comparing to a another new set of mono solid state amps (near 4 times the cost) there was no contest. I am also a  now understanding the ‘Usable Power’ blog post on the main site. Using my Von S.. Vr4’s at 90db efficiency I never got anywhere near taxing the amp.

My present setup is Theta Basic II > Theta Pro Gen Va > ARC LS22 > Torii > VR4’s using a combo of Decware and MIT interconnects with MIT MH 770CVT’s to the speakers.
I am waiting on a ZP3 to get my vinyl collection going again and really looking forward to that day Had to sell my old ARC PH3 during a $$$ crisis.

From here my only additional experiment will be bi-amping to the VR4’s , Torii Mk II on top section and Bryston’s on bottom just for the heck of it after I get an additional set of speaker cables. I can though honestly say I would be a happy camper with just the Torii on its own.   

One last comment. I saw a post here also where someone said something about hum. I did not experience that here. If I pressed my ear right up against the driver at full gain I did hear a little but backing up just an inch or so it was gone. I have just installed a couple new dedicated 20amp quad sockets and still have to unpack my isolation Audio Power transformers. For now though it is still perfect.

Thanks again for input and I am really excited to move on with time here and see just what Torii  does after a more hours.

Regards,
KimKman

Looking like my solid state mono blocks may be going up for sale. The Torii does fine/great all by itself May take the money and build another system for my office.

Alright, good news your Torii is on the way. Really liking mine a lot here. Also yes, do like the two inputs for sure. I have a DAC backordered (PS Audio PWT) that will hook directly to the Torii. All else goes through the LS22.

Will be eager to hear your report once you have the amp at home.

Regards,
KimKman

Thanks Don.  Should be an interesting amp to hear!