Reliability - what’s your experience been?
I’ve been into high fi since the 1970’s. Fortunately, equipment breakdown has been few and far between.
As best as I can recall, I needed the following repairs:
1- new motor on a Thorens turntable (noisy motor)
2- Repair of an Aiwa tape deck (noisy channel)
3- Bryston amp (broken power switch)
4- Proceed amp (would not turn on)
5- CAL cd player (noisy channel)
6- Bricasti dac (no sound- just static)
7- Simaudio cd player (failed transport)
8- Pass integrated amp (intermittent noise)
not bad for almost 50 years experience. How has your experience been?
owned at least 7 Cary amps/preamps, never had an issue (still have the PH 302 mk II phono pre which is outstanding - sent products back for upgrades, not repairs, and have always received excellent service had a Sonographe TT in the 80’s which failed, other than that no issues aside from tubes wearing out |
@rooze , That was a lot of EL34s there! Was that then rated as putting out twice the wpc of the conventional V12?
@markmendenhall , in the days of Dennis Had, I used to rave about CAD's tech support and customer service. In the post Dennis days I feel that has gone down hill. However, I still cannot complain about reliability. I did have a coupling cap go out on my V12 (stereo version) which was 20 years old at the time, and I can accept that failure (especially as it was probably my fault), but the help I got from tech support was worthless (they quoted me their shop rate and told me to request an RMA and ship it to them) but a kind gentleman on another audio forum helped me troubleshoot it via emails. I pretty much swore off buying another Cary product because of that, but then I saw a SLP 05 going for a decent price in their preowned section; I had always wanted one, so I upgraded my venerable but modded SLP 90 (which was another Cary product that never gave me any problems). Anyway, the SLP 05 sounds fantastic and so far no problems.
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In about 30 years of enjoying HIFI the only repair issue I’ve needed was a dead meter on a Pass INT60 integrated amp. Pass repaired the meter quickly at minimal cost, and the customer service was great. I also have a few higher end Rega pieces that have never given me any problems. Rega has a lifetime warranty on all their stuff, and has US based repair locations. |
@immatthewj From memory the V12R was rated at 100w /channel. Yes, a lot of tubes, but a very cute looking amp in its deep red finish... |
