Why does my new tube amp and preamp sound so bad?

schipo,how can it be the room when before replacing the adcom with the cary he had great sound,the room hasnt changed only the gear has.

if your lascalas sounded good to you with your adcom ss gear & nothing else has changed in your rig aside from the addition of the cary amp & preamp it could be that you just simply prefer ss over tubes.

i wouldnt even start getting into tube rolling as a way to correct a bad sounding rig, from my experience with tubes all tube rolling will do is drain your cash & add to your frustration,the same goes for cables,both are a tweak.

i too fell in love with the idea of tube gear & klipsch speakers(klipsch horns)& had the exact same experience as you are going thru,weak bass & the more power i put to the speakers the worse it sounded & i used the exact same word(tinny)as you to describe the new sound,I HATED IT!

try it the other way around,try using the cary pre with the adcom amp & see how you like it,i hated tube amps with my k horns but i did like tube preamps with ss amps on the k horns,i still got the flavor of tubes with the BALLS of solid state amplification.

i was running a $500 20 year old mcintosh mc7100 100 wpc ss amp with my k horns before buying a $7,000 mcintosh mc2102 100 wpc tube amp to run them with & what a let down that was,the same as your experience,i asked all the same questions as you & got all the usual answers like my cables were all wrong,the rest of my rig was unresolving,try different tubes,move speakers around,add room treatments,of which none worked.

i wouldnt waste alot of time & cash experimenting trying to correct a sound that you dont like,sell the carry rocket & put the cash into a class a ss amp,you'll be alot happier,i was.

mike.

Did you actually play music through the preamp for 100 hours, or did you just leave it on for that period without signal. Coupling caps in preamps need to be broken in with a signal. The performance of tube preamps can be undone with brand new coupling caps.

Hello. A tube amp willnot have the lowend of solid state amp. A tube preamp will not have the lowend of a tube preamp. Where the tubes will do better is in midrange and soundtage, imaging ect. The speakers you mention use compression drivers. These are very effeicnet and may very well be too much for the tube amp. try putting your adcom amp back in and driving it with the tube preamp see if you get additional transparency your after. Why not try Biamping with the adcom for the lows and you cary for the highs. MULLARD Input tubes will level out those hot highs you mention also.

Hi Larry, i also have a Cary pre, slp98, when i first put it into the system i had the same result as you, no bass and thin sounding.Not familiar with your model, but after reading the manual, i realised my pre is phase inverting, the manual recommends reversing the polarity of the speaker cable at the speaker end, done this and solved the problem, now sounds full with good bass.
Hope this helps
Rob.

If you are encouraged enough to go further with a complete tube system, my advice would be to put aside both preamps and find one with tube rectification. A used Cary SLP90, 94, or, 98 would be an excellent choice if you want to keep it in the Cary family. Do not under estimate the older SLP90. Next step is to spare no expense on the preamp tubes. You also can greatly improve the amp's sound by doing the same with the input tubes. Since you already like the amp, this could be your last step. My experience has been that most modern small signal tubes sound mediocre when compared with the NOS stuff.