Theory about Cary amps and their reviewers

better late than never...

I own a Cary 300SEI LX20, the higher watt KR tube version, no longer made due to reliability issues with the older KR tubes and then the company itself. The extra power makes the difference for most speakers. The tube itself is an improvement in the frequency extremes. It's a testimony to Cary's responibility that they made the hard to decision to bag the KR based design in deference to reliability since they loved that tube.

This beautiful little integrated has more detail, transparancy, finesse and "thereness" than the SS EAD Powermaster 500 (and everything else) I compared it to. I also am a big fan of upgrading through modifying as I have done with increasing depth with this amp over time. By upgrading the rectifiers first, then the coupling and bypass caps, then rebuilding the whole damn thing from scratch (ie. polyplroylene power supply caps, upgrading coupling caps again, improved the circuit, adding choke for filament supply, made wiring more direct) I was able to maintain the tube magic and remove most of any down sides, improving speed and transparancy, frequency extremes, bass clarity, smoother sibilance, dynamics, jump factor, lowering noise, hash and grunge, etc...

The point is that the product started out as a great real world product, (cute too) and can be improved to signifantly decrease the issues separating the tube and SS camps. They've also been extremely helpful.

The only negative issues I've had with it are a bit more physical hum off the power transformer than I'd like; output tubes supernovaing which were replaced for free a number of times; and 300B bias resistors burning up over time, which I replaced with their help before I reconfigured the whole thing with separate over speced resistors for each channel.

Dennis is a busnessman and a salesman with plenty of gas in his tank, but he covers all the bases responsibly, including providing a solid product at a fair price. Kirk, their former tech support man is an angel. The new guy is very helpful as well.

ya chooses ya poison...

'smy 2 cents.

Funny thing I went back to Cary in a SLP98P. Witch I love. Maybe a Cary dig amp this time & I do NOT thank Dennis Had is a hothead He is a good guy. & I find Cary's customer service to be pritty good.

I very much agree that they are always professional. Sometimes I think dealing with them is a little more off-putting than with some companies.

i have owned 3 cary preamps and a cary cd player. i have also heard cary gear in a variety of settings. their sound is anything but fat. in fact i find their products not tube like at all. they sound very clean open transparent and detailed and sometimes bright.

I am going to take a different route on this thread. I have a Cary SLP 50B or is it A as it is indicated to be both depending on where you look on the preamp. I got it because I thought the tubes would be a good match for my AR 110. Anyways it does not matter as my point in replying is is that the design Cary uses is sound but the parts quality is a bit lacking. This is probably an accounting cost cutting decision. At first it sounded ok. But I upgraded the volume to a stepped attenuator using an Elma switch and Takman metal film resistors, all other resistors to Takman metal film, the coupling capacitors to Mundorf gold and oil, the power supply capacitors were increased in value and swapped to Ruby Gold, and the first capacitor to a film from Solen. Now the ripple on the power supply is 103 DB up from 82 and with the Vishay carbon resistors gone and the addition of good capacitors it is very fast. The tubes are gold lions which are ok but not enough to make this change. My point is the component is no better then the sum of it's parts. Only reference components use the quality parts I just described.