Dennis Had Inspire Amps

[Formerly YB-2]

Originally Posted by decooney

jh901,
There are still a few people out there who repair and upgrade some of the older Cary products but you kinda have to ask around and prepare to pay $, shipping too. Helps to find a local tech if you can. A local retired McIntosh tech upgraded my Cary SLI-80 and Cary V12R amps, and they truly sounded great afterwards. I also had a chance to compare to my former Inspire Hot Rod amp. It comes down to your preference, your room, your speakers too in regards to what "sounds better" to your ears with you speakers. Caps, Hexfreds, resistor upgrades can help with some of the older Cary Audio gear. Give it a try before you part with it, if you can. Good Luck.

Unless Cary stopped doing so recently, they repair/upgrade most any of their older equipment. The one time I had them work an SLI-80 for me they did excellent work at a reasonable cost & turnaround time.

[Beatlebum]

Hey All,

For those of you running an Inspire 45 SET amp, I'd be curious to know what rectifier tube your utilizing and with which 45 tubes? What do you hear with your combination that you like?

Thanks,

Tim

[decooney]

Originally Posted by Formerly YB-2

Unless Cary stopped doing so recently, they repair/upgrade most any of their older equipment. The one time I had them work an SLI-80 for me they did excellent work at a reasonable cost & turnaround time.

Size, weight, and shipping distance matters too if you have to ship it.

--------------------------

For sure, and I've not heard they stopped offering those services either. While they do a nice job, one consideration is shipping cost and risk of damage shipping back/forth and more of a concern for HEAVY items.

As an example, my larger Cary amp is 87lbs, costs $300 minimum to ship. Last time I spoke with their shipping department a few years ago they received an amp just like mine from a customer. Got hammered in shipping big time, transformers completely crushed in. Chassis ruined. Argh. The tech later told me it had to be completely torn apart and rebuilt with parts collected over time. As I recall with an older out of stock unit needing shipping damage repairs, it took few months to find and acquire the replacement parts and put it back together. In another case example, a member right here on this AA forum had to ship his preamp back and forth a few times to get it fixed right, and he waited quite some time to get it back.

...just some other things to consider about local upgrades vs. shipping for upgrades, mods. I'm rather nervous about shipping heavier amps now.

[Bombadil]

On another forum, a person wrote about using a dual 6J5 to 6SL7 adapter and liking this better than the 6SL7s he has tried. A 6SN7 is two 6J5s in one envelope.

Has anyone here tried this? From the looks of my Inspire amp, I think the dual 6J5 board (available through that auction site and other sellers) would fit.

Could start a whole new wave of rolling 6J5s to see which one likes best. I went through over 15 different 6SN7s.

[CRJCapt]

What did you settle on?

[Tyson]

Anyone seen the Inspire 300b Dennis has on eBay right now?

[Analog Addict]

Went over to Dennis' shop to drop off the parts for my next build and see what Dennis is up to. He was messing with a new pre amp and amp he is calling part of his "Nineteen series" for new 2019 builds. The preamp is a "3.1" using a pair of 6SN7s and a 6BX7 as a buffer/cathode follower. The amp is a 6550 SEP design with a 6SL7 up front. Neither has VR tubes, so I assume he's using SS voltage regulation. Together they make a really nice combination with a ton of bass and woofer control. Everything sounds clear and clean with a huge sound stage and plenty of dynamic headroom for big transients. We also played with the Inspire speakers, with Dennis tweaking the crossovers with a potential eye for tossing them up on that auction site for general consumption. Overall, a fun afternoon. Some pix...

Untitled by Analog Addict, on Flickr

From right to left - the new 3.1 pre, a current 3 series pre with VR tubes, and my knockoff pre. In the back, my phono pre

Untitled by Analog Addict, on Flickr

From right to left - an unknown and unused amp, a 300B SET, the new Model 19, and an older 45 SET amp. We ran the last three amps, and the 19 blew away everything else.

[Tyson]

Originally Posted by Analog Addict

Went over to Dennis' shop to drop off the parts for my next build and see what Dennis is up to. He was messing with a new pre amp and amp he is calling part of his "Nineteen series" for new 2019 builds. The preamp is a "3.1" using a pair of 6SN7s and a 6BX7 as a buffer/cathode follower.

My preamp uses this combo (6SN7 with 6BL7 follower) and it's really special. Almost like a mini-300b, but with crazy bass and dynamics.

[Tyson]

Question for the group. Below is a picture of my MB12 monoblock from 2014. I'd like to bypass the big white Audyn 4.7 uF cap (upper left in the pic) with a Jupiter copper cap, .22 or .1 value.

Question - if the Jupiter is rated at 600v, is it OK to use as a bypass there? I ask because the Audyn is rated at 800v and don't want to use an under-rated cap. Thanks!


EDIT - Dennis got back to me via email and let me know that the 600v Jupiter Copper cap would be just fine bypassing the Audyne. So out came the soldering iron, they are in there now. Hmm, I saw there's some red caps in there (10uF and 4.7uF) and I have a few extra .1 uF copper caps. I think I'll bypass those red caps too.....

[Audiophilehi]

Is there a preferred Inspire amp?