Hey Mark! Almost any amp will drive almost any speaker, the question is will the amp drive the speakers to full normal listening volume while playing very dynamic music – without clipping or coming close to clipping (we need to have some head room). We run custom OB (open baffles) that are ~93db efficient and the Yuri’s will make you deaf in short order (when we did the max volume test we both had to wear industrial hearing protection). Unfortunately 88db to 93db isn’t 5 short steps of efficiency, but almost 1/3 the efficiency (db scale is logarithmic). So yes you’ll get sound, but is it a good pairing – unfortunately no. The GU-50 would be a much better choice. As an audiophile of many years (how many? too many!), i’ve come to the conclusion that you really want to run efficient speakers – the response time is so much faster and as a result the overall speaker dynamics are truly amazing.
If you want to capture the sonics of your current speaker system with a higher efficiency speaker, look for paper coned speakers and unless you really like the sound of horns – stay away from horns and metal domed tweeters.
