it has been several years since i had a cary slp98p - one of the issues i had with the unit was the phono stage did not have a very low noise floor... it worked ok as a line stage but i found the phono stage unacceptable in terms of background hiss, even after trying numerous sets of tubes in the unit -- iirc i was using a benz glider medium at the time -- this for only 40-43 db of phono stage gain... no bueno...
ultimately i went to an audio research ph3se then i moved eventually to solid state units (lehmann decade and ayre p5xe)