Reliability of Cary Audio Products

My Cary experience over many years is rock solid. No problems. 3 cd players and Cary SLI-80.
Art

I recently purchased an SLP3 and a pair of Sixpacs from the Cary dealer in Oman. Fuses have blown regularly. The amp has been to the dealer a number of times for repair. Now a capacitor is on the blink, and a replacement has not been received for almost a month. Cary has been polite, but my equipment has sat in the dealer's workshop for most of the time since the purchase. I have asked for the Sixpacs to be replaced, but I have been informed that they have been discontinued. The dealer has given me a Superamp in the interim, but that is not what I paid for. I have not listened to music to my satisfaction since I purchased the Cary products. My personal experience is at odds with most of the comments here. Reliability issues remain.

Here is my feedback (all Cary system here).

Cary CD306: problems with the CD tray. Would get intermittently stuck, or worse, "eat" some discs (i.e. tray would eject leaving the disc stuck in the transport). Fixed under warranty 3 years ago. Never recurred since.

Cary SLP-05 preamp: Bought from dealer in Australia (240V). Multiple problems with blown fuses and dead indicator lights. Discovered that resistor specified by Cary is good for 220V. Replaced under warranty. Preamp works flawlessly, but indicator lights keep blowing. Have given up replacing indicator lights.

Cary CAD-805AE: 2 years of flawless, faithful service before being replaced by CAD-211AE.

Cary CAD-211AE: Flawless service to date.

Some years back, my local Cary dealer (Upscale Audio) acknowledged reliability issues with some of the Cary CD and/or SACD players. I don't recall him ever mentioning any issues with their electronics. I've had 300B monos for almost a decade and 805 monos for a few years less than that and neither has ever so much as burped. Just very reliable IME.

One design issue might concern you, though. Those elegant toggle switches that Cary uses are somewhat fragile and putting them on the lower back panel (RCA vs XLR switching, IIRC) of the 9 billion pound 805 amp wasn't the wisest choice. Very easy to snap 'em right off when uncrating.

Marty

So out of 39 responses, 15 report no issues. 38% reliability based on this very unscientific pole. This is how Consumer Reports does reliability reports on Automobiles. They base their data on reader poles. This is useless data. The only valid data is generally collected by the manufacturers themselves or through some larger, high volume dealers. They are not likely to share their data unless it is really good news. My opinion is: people that have had issues tend to be more vocal. High end audiophile components tend to be low volume, some manual fabrication and manual assembly. That leads to poorer reliability as compared to high volume, automated assembly processes. How many 'goners here have had to send their expensive Swiss watches in for repair one or more times, for example? Product performance and a friendly, responsive Service department are the key factors to consider when buying. We don't like to think our $$$ stuff has built-in flaws, but that is the reality sometimes. Going after top end performance requires some patience at times.