AES Six Pacs

Jensen oil filled caps are a fantastic upgrade, and the wbt solder would be logical to add to the build as well. Skip the power cord, and upgrade a little later if needed. Shunyata and Cary are a great synergy in my book!

I loved my SixPacs. I agree with Jalapenos regarding the upgrades. I'm interested in how the AE-3 MKII preamp performs. I had the AE-3 DJH and really liked it. I wanted to replace some caps in it, but overall thought it was a great piece of equipment.

Add in some high quality binding posts while you're at it. The ones that come stock (at least when I owned my Sixpacs) were very cheap plastic. Mine were done at Cary with a pair of WBT Gold posts and they were very nice.

I was thinking that the Jensen caps would be a worthwhile upgrade. The binding posts that I've seen in some recent pics don't appear to be plastic, but who knows? I think that AES may have made some changes over the last few years - possibly upgraded the transformers - as the amps are now rated for 60W vs 50W.

I haven't heard the DJH preamp but I know that some people prefer it over the MK II.

Roblanger...Tube amps have a not-too-steep increase in distortion, up to the point of clipping. The same amp might be rated at 50 watts @ 0.2% or 60 watts @ 1%. The 1% spec used to be widely used, particularly for professional gear.

No, I believe the newer models do offer more power: I sent my older sixpacs in to Cary for the Jensen upgrade and was advised that different transformers were available bumping the power up. After I received them back with the jensen caps and larger transformers, they sounded vastly superior to the original design... Night and day if you will!

I have also found 6CA7 output tubes to be great in the sixpacs, they are much cleaner at the frequency extremes than el34's.

I had these in my system a long time ago, and wasn't super thrilled with them. A little flat, pretty rounded around the edges; definitely not the sound I expected.

How much did the Jensen cap and better transformer upgrade run?

Thanks for the clarification on the updates/upgrades. I would definitely want a pair with the beefier trans and Jensen caps.

I'm probably comparing apples to oranges here, but I'm wondering how they would compare with the Cary CAD120s?