Well ... after talking with the tech at Cary... he talked me into going the direct coupled route on the slp98p. They are also replacing the output cap to a larger value ...added the hexfreds and I believe an additional mod to the power supply (some type of cap replacement ?? ).
I was kind of sold on the mundorf coupling caps - but in his opinion he felt it sounded best this way. He said it would keep its tube character but my improvements should be in bass, soundstage, and dimension.
I figured if I wanted more tubey goodness - I could switch tubes at some point.
So a risk - but given my system I think it might mate well. I have a sunfire signature (sonic signature on the warmer side of neutral - could use a little help in the bass slam area) plus Maggie 20.7s - that like to get pushed. My ps audio directstream feeds it all.
I'll report back. - any comments to talk me off the ledge are welcome.