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
I like reading the reviews on Amazon. It is very interesting the varying opinions of a product. I have yet to see any product with a reasonable number of reviews have a perfect, 5 star rating. Some evaluations have to be discounted completely, of course, and I have warily purchased items with only a 3 star average rating but also with only a handful of reviews. I found the products to be just fine. People's idea of quality varies. Some people see quality as a product that works as advertised with solid dependability. Others perceive quality to be how an item looks, feels and performs. One person is happy with his $15k car because it starts everyday and gets them to work year in and year out. Another person is happy with their $65k car because it looks and feels good and the dealer treats them like a king every time they have to take it in for repairs. Go figure.
Coming late here....just found this topic by doing a search as I think I might be somehow unlucky.
I had one CDP from Cary that fail completely and after a few attempts at repairing it, they offered great deal on a better replacement unit so I took it and it has been flawless for the last 3 yrs.
Got SLP-03 recently, brand new....the headphone jack never worked. Will be sending for warranty repair soon.
Got 120S MKII recently and seems to have a problem...loud hum in left channel.
I totally disagree with the cary statement of not been reliable I own a CD3/300 and a cary SLP-98

and I have it for about 4 years I never never have any

issues with the two units.

I just upgrade the preamp from SLP-98 to the SLP-05
Maybe I expect too much, but I've owned a pile of both pro and hifi stuff over many years and am surprised at how reliable it has generally been, so if something goes bad I freak. I sent an Acurus A250 amp (new back then) back to Mondial 3 times for channel buzz therapy, and sold it sooner than later. Am I lucky? I research most things before buying, but I do now expect stuff to never break, which is unrealistic but seems to work for me. I will never buy anything hinting of unreliability so I'm trying not to bug about Cary as i'd like one of their amps someday...say in ain't so!
My Cary purchases have been plagued with problems..  I won’t buy a Cary audio anything ever again. I won’t even go into the amp issues I had years ago.. I’m currently on my 4th Cary 306 SACD player.. Every one of them had issues.. skipping, pops, drawer mechanism.. They would send me back the unit and it would be damaged cosmetically as well as internally.. I even drove up there myself a few times to deliver or pickup my player from service.. I hate this damn player..  but it’s one of the best sounding players I ever owned. I use it as my DAC currently and I don’t care about the CD player.. 
in my experiences with Cary, they never seem to follow through and get the product reliable before they start working on the next project..