better late than never...
I own a Cary 300SEI LX20, the higher watt KR tube version, no longer made due to reliability issues with the older KR tubes and then the company itself. The extra power makes the difference for most speakers. The tube itself is an improvement in the frequency extremes. It's a testimony to Cary's responibility that they made the hard to decision to bag the KR based design in deference to reliability since they loved that tube.
This beautiful little integrated has more detail, transparancy, finesse and "thereness" than the SS EAD Powermaster 500 (and everything else) I compared it to. I also am a big fan of upgrading through modifying as I have done with increasing depth with this amp over time. By upgrading the rectifiers first, then the coupling and bypass caps, then rebuilding the whole damn thing from scratch (ie. polyplroylene power supply caps, upgrading coupling caps again, improved the circuit, adding choke for filament supply, made wiring more direct) I was able to maintain the tube magic and remove most of any down sides, improving speed and transparancy, frequency extremes, bass clarity, smoother sibilance, dynamics, jump factor, lowering noise, hash and grunge, etc...
The point is that the product started out as a great real world product, (cute too) and can be improved to signifantly decrease the issues separating the tube and SS camps. They've also been extremely helpful.
The only negative issues I've had with it are a bit more physical hum off the power transformer than I'd like; output tubes supernovaing which were replaced for free a number of times; and 300B bias resistors burning up over time, which I replaced with their help before I reconfigured the whole thing with separate over speced resistors for each channel.
Dennis is a busnessman and a salesman with plenty of gas in his tank, but he covers all the bases responsibly, including providing a solid product at a fair price. Kirk, their former tech support man is an angel. The new guy is very helpful as well.
ya chooses ya poison...
'smy 2 cents.
I own a Cary 300SEI LX20, the higher watt KR tube version, no longer made due to reliability issues with the older KR tubes and then the company itself. The extra power makes the difference for most speakers. The tube itself is an improvement in the frequency extremes. It's a testimony to Cary's responibility that they made the hard to decision to bag the KR based design in deference to reliability since they loved that tube.
This beautiful little integrated has more detail, transparancy, finesse and "thereness" than the SS EAD Powermaster 500 (and everything else) I compared it to. I also am a big fan of upgrading through modifying as I have done with increasing depth with this amp over time. By upgrading the rectifiers first, then the coupling and bypass caps, then rebuilding the whole damn thing from scratch (ie. polyplroylene power supply caps, upgrading coupling caps again, improved the circuit, adding choke for filament supply, made wiring more direct) I was able to maintain the tube magic and remove most of any down sides, improving speed and transparancy, frequency extremes, bass clarity, smoother sibilance, dynamics, jump factor, lowering noise, hash and grunge, etc...
The point is that the product started out as a great real world product, (cute too) and can be improved to signifantly decrease the issues separating the tube and SS camps. They've also been extremely helpful.
The only negative issues I've had with it are a bit more physical hum off the power transformer than I'd like; output tubes supernovaing which were replaced for free a number of times; and 300B bias resistors burning up over time, which I replaced with their help before I reconfigured the whole thing with separate over speced resistors for each channel.
Dennis is a busnessman and a salesman with plenty of gas in his tank, but he covers all the bases responsibly, including providing a solid product at a fair price. Kirk, their former tech support man is an angel. The new guy is very helpful as well.
ya chooses ya poison...
'smy 2 cents.