Upgrading Cary CAD 300sei integrated


Would appreciate if Cary users could share their expirience please.
The common upgradis are power and output transformers plus caps, but which one to get? I read a lot good things about Tamura brand and may will be prepare to go for it, but are there some others for less?

From caps, Jensen's been advised by a good friend of my, but than again, which one, mean, want to keep the budget healthy:-)

Also, do you think that I have to upgrade all in once or just starting from transformers may give the huge step up already?

And last, but not least, what are the results and the total financial damage? Do you think it was worth to do or you ended up bying another amp after all?

THX
maxmad
I THINK there is an F1 version of the 300sei like there is of the SLI-80 (if someone knows for sure, please chime in). A number of thiings are upgraded in those units but it is not inexpensive ... good news is it would be a "factory approved" upgrade

good luck!

Jeff
First, soft recovery diodes and Jensen copper/oil caps are part of the upgrades that Cary does to make signature models of their amps, so there is nothing here that is out of their normal upgrade path. Cary can do the work, but it is quite simple and can be done by any qualified technician or experienced hobbyist.

Here is a much more cogent explanation of the benefits of soft recovery diodes than I can give:

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=202893

As far as caps go, you will only need to change the output coupling caps, so only two caps are required.

As to the improvement that this package will make, it will have less noise, greater clarity, better detail, more body and smoothness. If you find your amp to already be too smooth, you can use teflon caps, such as the V-Cap in place of the oilers.

Michael Samra, one of the authorities on audio power supplies, and Cary power supplies in particular, finds the large computer-grade electrolytic caps that you see on the top side of the amp to be total junk and rebuilds the power supplies using film or oil caps. Interestingly conrad-johnson has done away with using electrolytics and uses film caps exclusively. I have not tried it, but my guess is that this would be a giant move forward, sonically, though it would kill the resale value and the large physical size of the oilers or film caps would create aestetic problems as well.
leave it alone it sounds superb as it is plus you never will get back what you spend for the upgrade,,,
I always felt that the remote/volume control was less than ideal when I had my 300Sei.
I tube rolled some nice Brimar 6sn7 to good effect but that was as far as I went.

If I still had mine, I would opt to run it as a power amp and bypass the whole preamp section,volume control as can be done with other integrated amps.

I've had such a great time since discovering the Lightspeed Attenuator that this thread has aroused my imagination about running one with a moddded 300sei.