Reliability - what’s your experience been?

My worst experience was lending a local audio club member a pair of beautiful Cary Audio V12R

@rooze ,  That was a lot of EL34s there!  Was that then rated as putting out twice the wpc of the conventional V12?

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 

@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.  

Starting out, almost everything I bought was defective. Fortunately things have improved in the last 5 years to 50%  maybe 70% okay.

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...

@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...

@rooze , the stereo version of the V12 (at least my V12 I) is rated at 50 wpc in triode mode and 100 wpc in ultralinear. I was thinking that the monoblocks version would be twice that?

And yes, they are beautiful amps.