2. amps-preamps
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Cary 120s

I am looking at a few different used tube amps to "move up the food chain" from my dynaco st70.

I am interested in possibly a Cary rocket 88, but I am seeing several Cary 120s amps for very reasonable prices here on the 'gon.

For a nice amp with this kind of power there seems to be a large number of these offered constantly here.

Are people having issues with the 120s amps or am I just seeing a lot of people with "upgradeitus"?

Maybe I should also consider a used bat vk55 or vk60 instead.

Have any Cary 120s users had any problems with your amp?

Thanks Dave
dav65mus
brf
1,715 posts
 
Another option would be to purchase a Rocket 88 amps and have the caps upgraded to either 1) Cardas Teflon caps or 2) Mundorf Gold/Silver/Oil depending on your preference. Add in some NOS tubes, a few resistor (Riken) upgrades, ERS sound damping material, and you are go to go for well under $2K!
brf
1,715 posts
 
“I just thought if you had balanced xlr outputs on your preamp that it means it is balanced circuitry...... I am new to high end gear so maybe that is wrong??”

Dave, I owned a DR6 and loved the preamp. Never ran it in balanced mode. A lot of manufactures put in pseudo balanced (XLR) output/input options for marketing reasons, but their circuit topography never was truly balanced.
rhljazz
1,255 posts
 
Brf, I found it odd that if I attempted to drive the 120S from my VAC Renaissance with the switch set to balanced output from the VAC, the sound was muted, and picked up noise from the remote volume control motor. It seems to work just fine using the XLR cables with the output set to single ended. Are you sure the Cary is truly a balanced input? BTW, the Renaissance uses transformers for the balanced outs.
brf
1,715 posts
 
Rhljazz, sorry I cannot answer your question as to whether or not the 120s is a balanced defferential design as my friend only runs his single ended and I did not look that closely. Perhaps the XLR pin outs are different between the VAC and Cary, that would cause the mismatch that your heard.
dav65mus OP
41 posts
 
so the cardas and mundorf cap upgrades have different sound characteristics..... Can you describe the differences?

Also on the nos tubes what have you found that works well in a rocket88 ?

Thanks Dave
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