Cary cares and now I care about Cary.

I also had the chance to meet Dennis Had. I am a member of the local audio society in Montréal, Canada and 2 years ago we had a suite where we demonstrated a home grown audio system and the different aspects of our club. Cary had a suite just besides us and Mr. Had came by to talk to everybody, lent us a power amplifier (Rocket 88) to compare to ours and offered help to the DIY'ers to get parts. What a great guy.

Serge

I haven't had any experience with Cary, but have experienced the same with Ralph Karsten and his associates at Atma-Sphere Music Systems. In addition to designing and building great products, their genuine customer service and avid dedication to their profession is noteworthy and comforting. Like the All-State Insurance motto, I feel like I am in great hands with Atma-Sphere. I am guessing this is how you are feeling about now as well.

Brainwater, Yes the folks at Cary are very good people and have a true passion for audio gear, as well as the customers that buy from them. Kirk helped me a great deal with some of the battery amps they assembled/manufactured for Nirvana Electric Works (N.E.W). They could have told me to pound sand you know where. For that I have purchased numerous Cary products over the years.

The sad part about your note is some of the comments that you made that you are a nobody . It is a growing feeling among some of us that we as the customer, are insignificant to the audio manufacturers. I think that is perpetuated by some of the dealers out there that yearn for some sort of cliche' to be in. I live in Fredericksburg, VA where the wonderful guys at QS&D, of Quad and Spendor fame, hang their hats. They are another great band of gypsies that are fun to hang out with. While they are not a store front, they always invite you in to listen to something they have strung together, or a Quad repair that is laying around. Enjoy your Cary's.

I had the opportunity to meet Dennis and Kirk at a small reception. Really nice people and they told some wonderful stories and are very passionate about audio. I wish them many years of success. Bill

Catman , nice observation. You must have been " feeling my pain" on a subconscious level. Maybe its the door handle imprint on my behind I still feel that makes me really appreciate the true great companies like Cary. To explain : I recently saw a dream speaker here on the Gon for one eighth the cost of a new pair. It was simply the deal of the century . I posted questions here and Audio Asylum trying to gather info on things like placement , related component synergy ect. I exhausted every known resorce but had to turn to the company for a few remaining questions. The reception was nice at first as I was assigned a rep who answered all my questions. The conversation turned 180 as I was repeatedly asked to just " send those old production models here and we will do a trade on a new pair". Well that trade was about 40k more. hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... well , not entirely out of the question but I wanted to hear them here first and if I wasnt satisfied , we would talk trade. Thats when I felt the unmistakable swishing sound of that door behind me. No return calls or return e mails. I felt like I was dealing with snobs. Plain and simple. I love the speaker and would in all probability have made an effort to fly out somewhere and audition the new models at some point but I would not buy from them in the future and would not reccomend them to you based solely on my experience.I do not claim to know that many owners of audio companies so my incredible , damn near life changing event at Cary Audio yesterday may well be the exception rather than the norm . I know one other owner while I am on it however. I met Mike Kelley of Aerial years ago when I was creating a system around his 10 t s . His genuine warmth and great attitude has in fact kept me with his company. Since then I have purchased the center { cc5 } two subs { sw12 } and the outrageous new {20 t } for my mains. Was it him , the speakers he produces or the combination? I dont know but here are a few exammples of buisness ethics that highlight how to and not to conduct a professional relationship.

Any company that sells a CD player for upwards of $5k and only warrants it for 1 year is not right (Cary only warrants their players for a year.). I had a Cary 306/200 CDP and something needed to be fixed on it about 1 week after the one year warranty was up. Cary still charged me about $90 for the fix which was merely a loose wire.

I also had a problem, a severe one, with mono-blocks I bought from Cary. They too was out of warranty but I spoke w/ Dennis directly and he made sure things were taken care of although I did have to pay shipping. Since these things are hand made, and and pretty much cutting edge, I was not upset with the breakdown (I did have two sets of Cary amps for a total of 4 yrs and this was only glitch, and obviously an isolated problem). Everything worked perfectly everytime, all the time, except for a bad factory tube choice.