Reliability of Cary Audio Products


I'm considering adding a second (all tube) system for my home office. Amongst the integrated amps that are being considered is the Cary SLI 80. A friend, who is also a long term retailer of audio products, suggested that Cary has a poor reliability record. He hasn't sold Cary for a long while, and from what I've read on Audiogon, he may be out of touch with Cary products. Comments from Cary owners would be appreciated.

John
johnrob
My friend who is a audio technician works on cary stuff I would never buy one. One of the intrgrated amps (I don't rember what one) he was working was self destructing due to the fact the wire gauge was way to small & some other design trouble.He told the guy the unit was not worth fixing & if he wanted it fixed to send it back to Cary. If you open one & look at it, it looks like a big mess of wire, not a neat job at all lots of IC's too. This may not be true to all of there stuff Im shur there is many happy Cary owners out there.
My Cary SLI-80 Signature has been spot on for years now. No issues and I love the amplifier. I owned a Cary 308 for about 6 months but upgraded. No issues during my ownership. I have several friends with Cary Amps (SEI and a SLI-50) who have had ZERO issues.

Chris
Problems with a Cary amp some years ago, output tube failures and bias resistor failures. I had some service issues as well. Hopefully they've improved since then.
Had my AES Sixpacs and AE-3 DJH for 2 years now, and have put on a fair number of hours on both pieces. No problems at all.
I bought a used Cary SLI-80 here on Audiogon about a year ago. I've had a 308T cd player for about 6 mos. I've used both pretty much daily with zero problems, plus they sound great!