Cary 120s

Vlentudia:

Your PrimaLuna Prologue 3 and Cary marriage was a bad one? Can you speak a little to that? I have been running my 3 with Wyred4Sound monoblocks but on the market for a tube power amp...

I am using the 120S with Magnepans, and the PL felt like it didn't have enough gain for the 120S/Maggie combination. I think that the PL3/120S combo would work with more efficient speakers. I'm a PL fan (I have a Prologue One).

The 120S really makes the Maggies sing with the Doge 8 and now the SLP98.

The amp has approx. 150 hours on it now. It took about 90 hours before the ultralinear mode began to develope some dimensionality with a reduction in grain. At the 100 hour mark, I replaced the stock 18 gauge cord with a Nordost Brahma which didn't seem to make much of an improvement. I changed to a generic 14 gauge cord and the sound improved markedly but I still felt the bass to be light weight. Compared to the VAC, the 120S was more distant, dynamically less expressive, listenable, but basically boring.

I have all components plugged into a Nordost Thor and for experimental purposes I connected the 120S into the wall bypassing the Thor. Wow, what a difference! I believe it is safe to say that any Nordost power product is a poor match for the 120S. The system now has deep solid bass and the dynamics are much improved. The treble grain is virtually gone as well. I'm still using the stock tubes and I have had no reliability issues whatsoever. I'll need to find a better PC than the generic 14 gauge unit I have now. Perhaps there is more to gain from this amp.

I will recant my initial criticism of the ultralinear mode now that it has sufficient hours and Nordost removed from the power supply. The triode mode is still too laid back and mellow for my taste.

I have had a Cary 120S amp running through a Cary SLP05 preamp for about a year now. At the onset, the pairing was good but not what I would call great. I tube rolled Genelex KT88's, Genelex KT77's and then found some NOS Mullard EL34's that really bested anything I had tried. Expensive but really took the system up a couple levels. I then added a Synergistic Research T3 power cord to the amp and a T2 to the preamp with immediately noticable improvements. Now this system does kick but..but sure had to outlay to get there.

5 years ago I visited their facility in NC where they have a nice listening room set up showing off there products.
It was interesting to note that all the Cary gear was connected using Kimber interconnects, speaker cable, and power cords, with no line conditioners. All the internal wiring used in there equipment is Kimber silver wire too.
I have been using basic Kimber cabling w/ outstanding results on my Cary and Audio Electronics equipment, and it was encouraging to know that Cary chooses Kimber too. You guys may consider Kimber Kabling as well.