Reliability of Cary Audio Products

I purchased a Rocket via audiogon a year ago - dead tubes, bad fuses, no mA plug. Took a month to sort it out - weird hazy sound, tube swapping inconclusive - finally took it to a local shop and tested all the tubes. This was after a dead reading on the mA scale on a meter (after I bought a plug from Cary). Bad inputs (EL34) and inverters (6922), one output also shot (KT88). Fuses shot, but still looked ok when held up to the light. Changed the two out, plus bought tubes. Much better. And no problems since. Cary was also very helpful through the mess, even though their site says they don't help people who buy used. Easy to work on, and an interesting experience that made me feel more competent, not less like when you go to an audio store with dead equipment. For me it was like the first time you fix your car yourself. It wasn't actually difficult - the amp itself is pretty bomb proof. I suspect that these sorts of stories though are what has given tubes a bad name and one they have had to get out from under with audio mag reviewers. Now if someone would just do the same about the percieved wattage issue...

Ok - I could complain about a radio shack choke in my Rocket - but let's be honest - all chokes suck. All chokes should be easily replaceable in a couple of hours, because eventually they all fail.

"A mess of wire and not worth working on" though to me equals someone who is not familiar with tubes or point to point wiring philosophies and is NOT someone you want working on your three thousand dollar amp. Not seeing green boards and then saying "what a mess" is a sure sign you have the wrong technician. Most amps use smaller guage wire than you might think (most speakers use larger guage 18/16/14 and bigger caps) - usually 19 or 22amg - the Cary's use top o' the line 22amg Kimber and that's about $8. a foot (versus maybe I dunno $.20?), plus ceramic tube sockets and Kimber caps to start with.

A bad resistor is a classic story but not a bad one, and considering there are only about two dozen (high quality) ones in the whole amp, if you have an eletrical meter, which you should, just like it says in the manual, even if you are slow it can't take you more than half an hour to check all of them, and its almost always the one at the input tubes. It's a well known engineers very old way of protecting equipment: a resistor designed to fail that shuts down the amp during a power surge even when the fuses don't pop.