Hi @billpete and yes, that's what I was asking about. Good to know. Now that you are getting use to it the sound with the current tube set, there can be room to grow for sure. When my 98 was new, it came with the four standard EH tubes, it was okay, yet not close to where it ended up staying the past 4-5 years. A few times I did rotate back through the new EH, TungSol, and a few others that were nice, but not the best. While I still have some of my vintage sets yet I ended up settling on new re-issue tubes that matched better with my system. Good Luck to you and yours on the next steps whatever you decide to do. 
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.
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@decooney , did you ever try the EH Gold Pin 6sn7s? |
@immatthewj apologize I probably should have clarified that early on, I did not run the gold pin EH, and cannot speak for those, I was referring more to the original EH which came stock in my 98 and those are metal pin, not gold pin. @billpete there are two pairs of course, 2 - 6SN7 buffer cathode followers, 2 - 6SN7 line stage. The front two are for the gain stage and apparently play a crucial role in amplifying the signal before it is sent to the output stage. Most recommend placing higher-quality tubes in these positions to achieve better sound quality. I’ve played a bit putting the more transparent in the front, and then vice-versa, with the softer ones in front. Whatever sounds signature I want, I put the opposing pair in the rear as one approach. Another aspect I like about this preamp and why I keep it. Gold Pin EH - probably best to share your experience here for others as I’ve never tried them, and just jumped up to other tubes as those gold pins came out later. |
Thought I'd post an update on how I'm getting along with the SLP 98. I'm having fun with it and enjoying the music. Makes my cd's more listenable than I've ever had in my system. Still fiddling with tube rolling but mostly in my phono preamp (Cary PH301). It's been a bit of a challenge to find the right synergy between the two Cary pieces but I seem to be getting close to what I've looking for, at least with what I have on hand. I have swapped turntables, cartridges and done a lot of tube rolling. I haven't spent a ton on tubes for the SLP 98 just yet but am currently enjoying Sylvania chrome top GTB's in front and Raytheon GTB's in back. I'm still confused as to which tubes are gain and which are output. If someone can clarify that, would be nice. I've tried 3 different pairs of Sylvania GTB's, two red letter pairs and one green letter pair, all chrome tops and I think all 50's vintage. For whatever reason, the current pair of red letters sound the best and better than the green letter in the front of the preamp. I had EH gold pins in back but found them to be a bit "ringy" with high treble. Is this microphonics? I almost always find this with cheap Chinese tubes. Anyway, putting the Raytheons in made a big improvement. Waiting for a few more tubes that I bought, some older VT231's. I did use the original EH tubes around 100 hours to break them in. They weren't terrible but they weren't great either. One pair is the standard pin, other pair is the gold pin. I don't consider either of them as a permanent fixture. The vintage ones are far better. More detail, better bass, overall tightness and no ringing or microphonics. I have mostly evaluated the SLP 98 on cd's since I've been going through so many changes with turntables, cartridges and tubes in the phono stage. It kept seeming like nothing was right. I will try the SLP 98 phono stage again, once I get all sorted out with the PH301. As I said, I"ve found an odd synergy between the two as I've never had two tube pieces working together before. It seems to complicate things but I am getting close to what I think things should be. Another thing I did was go back to having the speaker wires reversed, as Cary says to do and decoony said to do as well. At first, I thought it sounded bad that way but I think I was having the synergy issues between the two Cary's that I was having to sort out. To keep it simpler, I went to evaluating mostly cd's. Tubes, cartridge choices and settings have all had a hand in what was baffling me. Still working on it but getting there. |
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