As dogearedaudio stated, Cary told me in an email to not use KT66’s in this amp.
To all you Cary SLI 80 owners, I'm looking for tube suggestions
Hello all, I have a one year old Cary SLI 80 HS and I have not changed a thing on it. Same tube set it came from the factory with. KT88's are Psvane, input tubes are JJ's. It is a sublime match with my Volti Razz speakers.
My question is this, what have you all tried with rolling tubes? Anyone try output variants? EL34's, KT 77 or 66's. Or have you changed out input tubes and noted and enjoyable difference?
Any and all suggestions would be welcome.
Thank you,
Doug
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KT-88, I’ve found Gold Lion warmer vs Shuguang Nature and Treasure. Have a pair of KR Audio 300B, absolutely superb. Never heard their KT 88, I would imagine thar are also superb, however they are pricey. EL-34, I’ve found St Petersburg Svetlana the best, followed by Tesla and RFT. Never owned the Mullard xf2. Gold Lion KT 77s are very nice, a more modern clear, clean transparent sound than EL34. Driver/Signal tubes, my favorite are NOS Tung Sol black bottle round plates, mouse ears and WGTA, followed by Sylvania GTA, then Raytheon WGT. Never heard an SLI 80, but I run the tubes above in a Dennis Had Inspire KT 88 and a Cary 300B SEI. Similar construction since all designed by Dennis. |
@immatthewj I forgot to mention bias in the V12 / V12R. The original manual calls for higher settings, and my local tech disagreed with this. We jumped on a call with the design tech after Dennis left cary, and he said they had now recommended lower bias settings per bank, not as high as 275ma any more. However, I see the manuals I found online were never updated. I found out after a few other V12/V12Rs had been in for repair so I paid close attention to this on mine. Looked it up just now, with EL34s, still read this, checking tonight still reads "Follow the instructions provided. (250-275 mA is the recommended bias setting range, per side, with 220 mA being the minimum suggested bias level setting) Make certain to set the test meter used to mA range.". Well, Looks like the old manual was never updated to reflect lower values. I ran and tested 275, 240, 200ma per side over a few years. My tech was insistent 200ma per side was plenty (which is 33.3ma per Shuguang EL34 tube) Sure they can handle more but he felt it would help save the tubes and transformers to live longer. After this I never went over 220ma per bank. The last few years I had that amp I kept it at 200ma per bank and it sounded great fwiw.
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- 23 posts total