Cary SLP 98 users, past and present, are there any left?
Recently purchased the above mentioned preamp in Jaguar red, has phono section and Lundahl MC upgrade, also Hexfred rectifiers and is direct-coupled. Most of that means little to me but I know the upgrades matter. I am very pleased to far with what I hear and I am listening to nearly new cheap tubes. I'm going to burn them in awhile before deciding what to look for in tube rolling. I have yet to try the phono section as I use my Cary PH301 phono pre and SAEC SUT. Listening to LP12 with Linn Karma LOMC. It all sounds very damn good to me. CD's are easier on the ears than they used to be. I think the tubes tame them down a tad. Currently listening to them on a very old Pioneer DVD player V7400. I think it may sound better than my 20 bit Denon which is up for repairs.
Cut to the chase, just wanted you guys to know the electronics, front end anyway. The first time I tried the new Cary, I had the umbilical crossed up and only the phono stage seemed to engage. The PS got quite warm. It still runs warm and that is the question. How warm should it run? It's certainly not too hot to touch but it is warm, I'd say twice as warm as my PH301 PS, which is about the same case. It does sound very good. I'm just hoping that I didn't cause harm in my first session. Was only a few minutes but knew something was wrong and found that the umbilical was the problem. I was shocked that it was possible to put it together incorrectly. Never had that trouble on the PH301.
Anyway, overall, I am very pleased and know that I will likely be looking at different tubes down the road. Only complaint is the remote. 5k preamp and 50 cent remote. Kind of cheesy. Not enough to be displeased with anything, just an observation.
Thanks for this. I think I'm comfortable with it after what you say. It gets warm, not what I'd call hot. I could leave my hand on easily without discomfort. Where do you normally have your separate channel volume controls? I've been tying to figure out what sounds best, channels up, main volume down, etc. One thing for sure, I have plenty of gain. |
@billpete , as far as the setting of your L and R input level knobs as related to the setting of your volume knob, I once started a thread about all the gain I have with my SLP-05. (I am only bringing this up because I am thinking the way Cary set the potentiometers up on both preamps would be quite similar). Too make a long story short (and I’ll paste a link to the thread if you are interested in the long story) there were opinions on both sides (surprise!) about setting the two input level knobs. But my ultimate take away was that there was more degradation to the signal the more it had to travel through the pots and having the pots turned all the way up was the next best thing to removing or upgrading them. After typing that SLP-05 trivia, back in ’99 I bought a second hand SLP-90 that had been (and I quote) "hot rodded by Dennis Had himself." Part of that "hot rodding" included completely taking the input level pots out of the circuit. But the way I looked at it, they can be quite helpful for troubleshooting L & R channel issues so I actually sent it to Cary and had them un-hot rod it. Anyway, in case it will be helpful (or entertaining) here is a link to that SLP-05 thread that I alluded to: https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/too-much-gain-cary-slp05-question?highlight=SLP%2B05%2Btoo%
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OK, so I went back and read this thread. Interesting for sure. It would appear that not quite "full open" might be best? Hard to say for sure but listening to how each one behaves is probably the only real solution. There are so many variables with upgrades and even tube choices. I am not using the phono stage in the 98, haven't tried it yet so I have to consider the values of cartridge choice, SUT and the tubes in the Cary PH301. I usually have 5751's in the 12AX7 slots and they are lower gain than AX7. I just like most of the ones I've used. All this stuff comes into play. So far, I notice a little bit of graininess at the high end at times when things can become shrill. I mostly attribute this to new crappy tubes but time will tell. Overall, I'm very pleased. One question that I have is "Are the L&R input controls doing the exact same thing as the main volume pot or is there something different going on here"? Many moons ago, I had a Crown amp that had attenuators on it. I learned that running them about 3/4 up, gave me the best performance. For typical loud listening for me, everything came to life when the preamp volume knob got past 12, usually around 1 sounded best to me. I found this also to be true in a later system with Parasound preamp and amps. No attenuators on the Parasound amps but volume on the PLD 2000 preamp brought life to music from 11 to 1. With the Cary, it is considerably below that, using the same Parasound amps. I have had not had it much past 10 even with the input levels only halfway up. It seems to sound very good in this range but I am still evaluating, still burning in tubes etc. |
I am not sure what went wrong with the link I pasted, but since it is too late to edit, I’ll try to paste it again: Anyway, @billpete
that is a great question, but it is one that I cannot answer. What I THINK is that they are essentially all doing the same thing, but that the L & R input level pots are not as good a quality as the main volume pot which is why (I THINK) that on paper, or in theory, performance would be best if they were set to maxed out and the main volume pot was the only adjustment used to adjust volume with. But I am unclear on that, so maybe we could get some clarification from @harpo75 on this, as he has been quite generous with his time providing SLP-98 and SLP-05 answers. So, @harpo75 , on the SLP-98 (and presumably the SLP-05?) are the left and right input level pots doing the same thing as the main volume pot? And would the signal be compromised or degraded if the left and right input level pots were adjusted down from fully maxed out to compensate for all the gain of the SLP-98 (or the SLP-05) and allow for more available real estate using the main volume pot?
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. . . my own experience with my preamp probably is not applicable to this. I have had back and forth discussions with @decooney related to Cary preamps and Cary amps, and from him I definitely have gotten the impression that the SLP-98 is voiced for a "sweet" sound (which I would think would be on the "warm" side) which should be on the opposite end of being shrill. The JJ tubes were previously discussed a bit in one of the previous threads and they generally get a bad rap, so I suppose that they could be the culprits. I’d still say if you can be patient enough (and I have always had a hard time with that, myself), give the tubes you have in it a chance to break in/burn in/mature and then see which way you think you need to go. Although I think my own experiences are not applicable to the SLP-98, my SLP-90 is/was quite warm sounding and it made nearly everything I played sound fun and happy. So perhaps it was more forgiving of sub par source material (and with that typed, my source is strictly CDP). When I replaced that preamp with my SLP-05, what I noted was that with real good source material, the SQ was dramatically better--wider, higher . . . more/better detail and air and imaging and sound stage . . . but with poorly recorded/mixed/mastered source material . . . yuk. There are CDs with music I like that I don’t bother putting in my CDP anymore. From what @decooney has said about his SLP-98, I would tend to think (but I may be reading into it) that the SLP-98 would lean tonally in the direction of what I found with my SLP-90 (but way more refined) as opposed to the direction I feel my ’05 goes. |
