Cary SLP98P not working with Audio Research VT100

I had a similar problem with SLP-98P F1. It worked fine when hooked up to a CJ tube amp but it kept shutting down my Mark Levinson amp.

Opus, did you find the cause?

Mofi... you may have just provided your own solution. I just checked the specs of a number of ARC preamps on the ARCDB web site. None of the preamp's outputs inverted phase. I have absolutely no idea what that means, so I'm hoping Ralph or Al will chime in. But that may be the cause of the anomolie. I wouldn't use the Cary pre with the ARC amp until you sort this out.

Hi guys,

The power amp has no way of "knowing" whether the output of the preamp is in or out of phase with the input of the preamp. The statement in the manual about not using a phase inverting preamp makes no sense to me, unless they are envisioning the possibility of the amp's AC current draw somehow affecting the preamp via its effects on the AC line voltage. Similar to the effect Ralph once described in this post, and his post just below that one. But it would seem far fetched that phase inversion in the preamp would have anything to do with that possibility.

Also, I recall it being mentioned in another thread a few months ago that the manuals for some ARC tube amps say in bold face type that "ARC tube amps must be used with ARC preamps or damage will occur." Which would seem to further reinforce the notion that cautionary statements in their manuals should be taken with several grains of salt.

Mac, your last post makes it pretty clear that the APC conditioner is somehow a factor. Looking at the photo of its rear panel shown on page 17 of the pdf of the manual, the one very speculative suggestion I have at this point, and it's just an intuitive guess, is to try plugging the preamp into the outlet designated for connection of a subwoofer (with the amp continuing to be plugged into the outlet designated for "amplifier"). Perhaps the separate filtering the APC has presumably been applying to the preamp and the amp is somehow involved; making that change would apparently put the two components on the same filter.

If you are using the APC's turn on/turn off sequencing provisions, keep in mind that that would be affected if you try this experiment, and you would want to manually turn the amp on last and off first.

Not sure what else to suggest at this point. Weird problem.

Regards,
-- Al

Have you tried connecting the speaker wires up (from the amp) red to red and black to black? Instead of red to black and black to red?