2. amps-preamps
  3. 193759-198816

Cary SLP 98 users, past and present, are there any left?

Recently purchased the above mentioned preamp in Jaguar red, has phono section and Lundahl MC upgrade, also Hexfred rectifiers and is direct-coupled. Most of that means little to me but I know the upgrades matter. I am very pleased to far with what I hear and I am listening to nearly new cheap tubes. I'm going to burn them in awhile before deciding what to look for in tube rolling. I have yet to try the phono section as I use my Cary PH301 phono pre and SAEC SUT. Listening to LP12 with Linn Karma LOMC. It all sounds very damn good to me. CD's are easier on the ears than they used to be. I think the tubes tame them down a tad. Currently listening to them on a very old Pioneer DVD player V7400. I think it may sound better than my 20 bit Denon which is up for repairs. 

Cut to the chase, just wanted you guys to know the electronics, front end anyway. The first time I tried the new Cary, I had the umbilical crossed up and only the phono stage seemed to engage. The PS got quite warm. It still runs warm and that is the question. How warm should it run? It's certainly not too hot to touch but it is warm, I'd say twice as warm as my PH301 PS, which is about the same case. It does sound very good. I'm just hoping that I didn't cause harm in my first session. Was only a few minutes but knew something was wrong and found that the umbilical was the problem. I was shocked that it was possible to put it together incorrectly. Never had that trouble on the PH301.

Anyway, overall, I am very pleased and know that I will likely be looking at different tubes down the road. Only complaint is the remote. 5k preamp and 50 cent remote. Kind of cheesy. Not enough to be displeased with anything, just an observation.

billpete

Showing 5 responses by erik_squires

erik_squires
16,592 posts
 

@billpete 

The battery test will only tell you which way the woofer goes.  It should move one way or another.  The crossovers up  above will filter DC and prevent you from learning much more.  If you aren't getting much movement, consider a 9V battery, or C/D cell. 

erik_squires
16,592 posts
 

The inversion in the preamp happens when you have a single tube gain stage. The famous Conrad Johnson PV10 and related pres were the same way. CJs philosophy was to minimize circuitry as much as possible so an additional tube just for polarity inversion seemed counter productive.

Personally I absolutely cannot tell absolute phase and don’t want to learn. 😆

Also, if memory serves, the phono stage in a PV10 was served by an additional single stage, inverting the phono inputs relative to line level.

I will stop here qnd say no more so Ralph can add a couple of pages of caveats, and exceptions to this. 🤣

erik_squires
16,592 posts
 

OP:

 

Worth pointing out that most multiway speakers need to reverse the polarity on one driver or another.  That's normal.

By convention (but not requirement) the woofer is in positive polarity and then drivers above that may be flipped as needed.   In a 2-way it's common to see the tweeter inverted, in a 3-way the midrange is often.  Depends on how the phase/frequency alignment works out.

Best,

 

Erik

erik_squires
16,592 posts
 

PS - Rather than me try to describe this, why don't some of you try it?  Reverse the speaker leads and tell me what you hear. :)

erik_squires
16,592 posts
 

Wouldn’t my system sound terrible if I have the speakers wired out of phase?

@immathewj

Honestly no. Hahaha. You have to have a good trained ear. It just so happens I’ve run across 2 situations in a month at 2 different dealers where this happened and I alerted them to it. And these were not mid-fi stores either.

In one case the Russian oligarchy dude bought the out-of-phase Wilsons. In part because the phase reversal sounds cool and maybe open. However as others expect, bass was missing.

That’s for an entire speaker being out of phase. Individual drivers may have different weird effects. Like, if the woofers alone are out of phase, you’d only hear missing bass, but if say the midrange was out of phase (relative to other speaker) I imagine it would sound odd in other ways.  Some even use these types of effects to create pseudo-stereo.  Kind of.  So, no I don't expect this would be truly horrible.

The OP has bi-wirable speakers, so easy to test woofers and mids with a battery.

I do think for the OP it's good to check the basics.  Make sure all drivers are actually working, and that they push/pull in the right direction before talking power cables... :D :D :D

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