Cary SLI-80HS modifications

@doyle3433 Any advice on what you’ve found to be nice pairings? Everyone else feel free to suggest as well.

While I stupidly parted with my own Cary SLI-80 a few years ago, I’ve followed along with others since. Cary bought it back from me, paid FULL price for it wanting to see/hear the mods I/we did with a local industry tech friend who’s now retired. The customer who bought it from Cary called me and really likes it a lot. He wanted to buy all the GL tubes and all of the vintage tubes I still had for it too. Good fun.

Following some of my history, a buddy [tube nut] received his new SLI-80 two weeks ago and while he swapped out the large stock KT88 output tubes for PSVANE EL34s (his preference), he’s been reminding me how swapping out the front two small 6922s makes the most difference. Its crazy, he’s already trying 5 different 6922 pairs he had on order, some new, some NOS vintage. This tube change kind of depends on what you are looking for in terms of more/less detail, or midrange, and such. He runs horn speakers too and hears every 6922 tube change.

imo, yours is a bit more of a special case with those Volte horns you have. Change matters, and select tubes well. As you let it break in, feel free to send me a PM/DM and I can share his my/notes with you. He did not like the stock EH at all though, and same experience I had. Depends on what you hear from your Volte’s.

His last two sets of 6922 this week [new production] were JJ gold pins, and vintage he’s really liking the [vintage production] Amperex 6922s. He’s got more burn-in required on his SLI-80 though. He rolls more tubes than anyone I know, to an obsessive degree. Problem is those old Amperex [matched pairs] are getting to be ridiculously expensive. I would only recommend getting those from a very reputable tube seller with a guarantee/return policy if you go down the vintage rabbit hole. I had Gold Lyon KT88s/6922s in my SLI-80 and they worked better than some vintage tubes i tried. Your situation could be different and call for different tubes - again, depending on what you are looking for from the sound.

I see you have the Cutest dac paired with GR cables. I’ve never tried that dac, but I did recently pick up the Border Patrol SE-I DAC, same dac that BorderPatrol / Volte / TriodeWireLabs uses a the shows. This BP SE-I dac is soft and gentle, i.e so picking a soft 6922 with this BP dac NOT be a good idea, as an example. Whereas I understand your Chord Cutest is a bit more detailed, so balancing things out matters and you may decide to lean one direction or the other with 6922s.

@doyle3433 @pehare  Did you check the bias before your first listen or did you trust that Cary set the bias correctly prior to sending your new amp to you?
 

 I’m taking delivery of mine tomorrow and I’d like to listen for a week before fussing with the bias.  Yes I know it’s easy, I’ve done it a dozen times, but it still seems to take me 45 minutes and I’m going to do it in a week anyway to ensure it’s stable.  Damn I’m impatient!

The bias on my current SLI-80 was incredibly stable. Unless replacing power tubes, I’d check it once a year and it would be within a mA or 2 of the initial setting (75 mA for KT-88s).

@txp1 Yes, I did power up the 1st time w/the bias plug in and once it was warmed up it was a little high just under 80mA so I backed off each channel to 73.  Could have been the line voltage variation from Cary's bench and my home.

@txp1 I decided to wait about a week. Like @pehare Mine was slightly high when I did check bias, so I backed down slightly. Otherwise right out of the box, no fuss no muss. I was startled at how good it sounds with my Volti’s. When I visited Greg at Volti to pick my Razz up, he had me listen to another pair of Razz with the Cary and it was great. Perhaps because my room is about a quarter the size of his, my set up is even more alive and involving to me. Sweet and effortless.

Next step is to pick @decooney 's brain about some tube rolling.. 🙂

Enjoy your new amps fellas!