The Cary slp 70 is a very musical preamp, warm old school tube sound with a wonderful midrange, a timeless preamp, there are a couple of article's online about upgrading with great results, even stock with careful tube rolling you would have something that is a better than a lot of the new generation preamps.
Cary audio slp70 worth upgrade?
Hi
my setup is jm reynaud offrande speakers, cary audio cad40 mono block amplifiers, Hans t20 turntable with origin live onyx and rb250 tone arms, a denon dl103r as main cartridge, auditorium 23 step-up transformers...
And 2 pre-amplifiers: a cary slp70 with phono section (the basic version, without output buffer and with internal power supply) and a first generation audio note m one, line only. I have also tried several different dedicated phono preamps but all of them in the "low bracket" price range: nad pp2i, Cambridge 540p, vintage rodec 52s... But don't like any of them, the rodec is noisy - not accurate and the Cambridge and nad clearly sound constricted when comparing to the cary phono section.
I also own a marantz cd5001 player and a Cambridge dac magic, but listen mainly to vinyl.
The issue: the cary clearly sounds more "lively" than the audio note, but has less resolution... It sounds lovely with vocals, but very "blurred" with rock or big instrumental ensembles. The audio note sounds too "hifi" for my taste: wow during five first minutes, but does not really make me want to listen to music for hours, no real magic.
I hesitate between different options:
1/ sell both preamplifiers and buy another pre with a good phono section
2/ buy a better dedicated phono pre
3/ improve the cary (upgrade capacitors, pot, rectifiers, power supply...)
4/ improve the audio note and add a phono pre
Well the obvious solution would be to try other gear, but I moved to Eastern Europe for work, no hifi-shop here...
Upgrading the cary would be around 1500gbp (mundorf silver gold oil caps, stepped atenuator, better resistors and diodes) and for that price I can probably buy a vintage Audio Research, ear 834p or audio note phono kit... And upgrade the audio note capacitors...
To make it more difficult, there is no schematic of the cary slp 70 on the web, but I was wondering if anybody knows it enough to tell me if it is worth the upgrade or if I should rather consider other options...
Thanks in advance,
Chris
my setup is jm reynaud offrande speakers, cary audio cad40 mono block amplifiers, Hans t20 turntable with origin live onyx and rb250 tone arms, a denon dl103r as main cartridge, auditorium 23 step-up transformers...
And 2 pre-amplifiers: a cary slp70 with phono section (the basic version, without output buffer and with internal power supply) and a first generation audio note m one, line only. I have also tried several different dedicated phono preamps but all of them in the "low bracket" price range: nad pp2i, Cambridge 540p, vintage rodec 52s... But don't like any of them, the rodec is noisy - not accurate and the Cambridge and nad clearly sound constricted when comparing to the cary phono section.
I also own a marantz cd5001 player and a Cambridge dac magic, but listen mainly to vinyl.
The issue: the cary clearly sounds more "lively" than the audio note, but has less resolution... It sounds lovely with vocals, but very "blurred" with rock or big instrumental ensembles. The audio note sounds too "hifi" for my taste: wow during five first minutes, but does not really make me want to listen to music for hours, no real magic.
I hesitate between different options:
1/ sell both preamplifiers and buy another pre with a good phono section
2/ buy a better dedicated phono pre
3/ improve the cary (upgrade capacitors, pot, rectifiers, power supply...)
4/ improve the audio note and add a phono pre
Well the obvious solution would be to try other gear, but I moved to Eastern Europe for work, no hifi-shop here...
Upgrading the cary would be around 1500gbp (mundorf silver gold oil caps, stepped atenuator, better resistors and diodes) and for that price I can probably buy a vintage Audio Research, ear 834p or audio note phono kit... And upgrade the audio note capacitors...
To make it more difficult, there is no schematic of the cary slp 70 on the web, but I was wondering if anybody knows it enough to tell me if it is worth the upgrade or if I should rather consider other options...
Thanks in advance,
Chris
1 response Add your response