The fabled and no longer available Cary Audio Slam 100's designed to rock your "bottom" with solid and controlled bass, thus it's name "SLAM". First of all, let me tell you that the version I have is the Chrome and it really makes a huge visual difference and add extra value for the re-sell price. It's a $500.00 extra but nowadays you'll find these beauties in the used market for less than $2,000 a pair and that price, my friends, is a total bargain. You'll never find something even close to the Slam's performance at this price anywhere...OK! The new price was a little bit high, $4000-$4,500 (Chrome) but today, having a pair of these or the close cousin SLM 100, is just a sweet deal! I have the Slam 100 on a bi-amp system feeding my trusted Tannoy DMT 15 System II for the bass and the SLM 100 for the mid-highs. Sound? With just a pair of either these the sound was exuberant, now in bi-amped configuration with 4 Cary's is simple magic and Alice in Wonderland! This is Cary Heaven folks! The bass is strong, articulated and controlled. Nothing boomy or "thin" as with other tube amps in this department. Mids are their forté, together with a huge sound stage and complete instruments separation...but nothing could beat them with voices! Wow...that's all. The highs are crystalline and soft. Unfortunately, these guys are extremely tube quality dependent. All tube equipment is supposed to be so but on the Cary's this tube situation is even more critical. I have the Slams with the new Tungsol 6550 and really kick ass! The SLM are sweet and effortless with new Svetlanas Winged 6550's. I have used them with SED KT-88's and NOS 6SN7 and the sound is completely different, As I said: they are way too dependent on tubes quality and model. They are happy with KT 88's KT 90's and even EL 34. 6550 is one of the most used with these amps. Re-tubing is costly, but nothing compared to the old OTL Fourier amps or AR Reference amps. Even though, if you are using quality, no less than $500 each for a matched quad of 88's or 6550's together with 2 6SN7's.

Conclusion: Grabbed a pair now! You can find them used at Audiogon for under $2,000 a pair chrome version...or you can spend a ridiculous and obscene amount of hard earned money on CJ, AR, Wavac, Air Tight, Atmasphere, etc... you got it! But, for what? Do you think the subtle difference could justify paying 10 times more? NAAAHHHHHHHH!!!

Magical holographic midrange and highrange. Clean, quiet and 3-D. Excellent bass power and detail (for a tube amp). Very musical - can listen (even loudly) for hours without "listener fatigue". Beautiful to look at, esp at night. Reasonable used Prices.

Bass has slight bloom with my MLs (which themselves have a slight emphasis around 100Hz), but better than any other I tube amps I have listened to or owned. Once you ever recognize this tube "feature" however, bass bloom is easy to hear and hard to ignore. Can't help but wonder if the magical Cary midrange was in reality a tiny bit of 2nd order harmonic energy. Who cares what caused it? It was ear candy!

3 day in-home demo: I can't forget the sound of these beautiful and artful tube monoblocks on my MartinLogin Monolith IIIs electrostatics. I returned the amps to my dealer and since his $$ was too steep, I declined to purchase - not being really convinced at the time. I purchased a Pass X350 from a private seller. The Pass is the best SS amp I have ever heard and is very impressive in many ways, but I still recall the SLAM-100 magical liquid mid and upper range. Extremely realistic sound when driving the ML speakers. The MLs are ultra clean and detailed and reveal the worst and best in electroncis, rooms and source material. But the SLAM-100s sound was seductive - it produced a more liquid and holographic mid and upper ranges. Its bass was also the best tube bass I have heard but it still had a small trace of the classic tube bass bloom that became distracting after several days. Fortunately, my MLs are bi-amp capable and I am now looking for a used SLAM-100 for the ELS portion and will use the precision X350 on the subwoofer sections. That should be an awesome combo.

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(in home use) Marsh A400, Pass X350, Parasound HCA2200, Dynaco ST-70, ST-70 (modified), Dyna Mk-III, Dyna Mk-VI (modified PS),B&K4420

1. Beautiful Sound 2. Georgeous Construction 3. Good value for the money considering the cost of solid state monoblocks

1. Wish they performed in pure Class A, instead of AB1. I turned up the bias a bit to bring out more inner detail. This pushes the tubes to perform closer to a pure Class A voltage range. 2. They stopped making them.

I had spent several years auditioning power amplifiers, and never came close to considering a tube amplifier. Too many complications, spongy base, etc. etc. I had scheduled an appointment to audition the Wadia 860x with the Krell FPB 300 and B&W Nautilus Speakers. After about 20 minutes I left the room. My ears couldn't take the harshness. While walking through another room, I heard the Cary's. I told the sales person "That's the sound I'm looking for." It just sounded real. No harshness, no glare, just pure vocals. After auditioning several other solid state amps, I bought the Cary's, Wadia and Nautilus speakers. The combination is extremely synergystic, and absolutely magical. Always buy a complete system if you can. I have several musician friends, and have spent many hours listening to small venue live performances. Yes, there are solid state amps that have more etched detail, and rock heavier at the bottom end. But they don't sound as natural. For me, its all about the sound, and of course, the music.

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None

-Does just about everything well -Beautiful mids & highs -Unexpectedly fast, accurate, and powerful lows -Beautiful to look at -Outstanding Cary support -General flexibility (i.e. tube-rolling, triode-push/pull, etc)

-Cary has discontinued them!

System: -2 Cary SLAM-100s -Cary SLP-98L (upgraded with 6v6 & 6SN7 circuit mod.) -B&W Nautilus 804s -Monster Z-2 Bi-wire cabling -Misc CD players and DACs As my musical tastes vary wildly, I had some major reservations in jettisoning transistors for tubes. While I have heard amazing mids and highs reproduced from both modern and old tube systems, I haven't really heard tubes reproduce percussion instraments as well as solid-state amps. After a great deal of research, I was fortunate enough to stumble accross a fair deal on a pair of SLAM 100s. From the people I'd talked with and the little info I could read on the Net, the SLAMs seemed to be designed to do a fair job on the low-end... thus, the inspiring SLAM nomenclature. The past months with the SLAMs have really opened my eyes and ears to the capabilities of modern tube systems. These SLAMs are much more versitile than I had ever anticipated. It seems that there's no style of music that these things can't handle effortlessly... breathtakingly (this may also have something to do with my SLP-98). The SLAMs can operate in both push-pull and triode mode. The SLAMs are so powerful in triode mode that I've rarely really needed to switch to push-pull... though it has been fun on occasion. The point is that this amplifier seems to really be capable of delivering radically different listening experiences, depending upon what you throw at it. The highs and mids are seductively sweet at all levels. This amplifier can reproduce stunning detail even at whisper levels (quite handy for when my wife is asleep). The SLAMs have truly offered me everything I had anticipated in a tube system. What's been most surprising to me is the way that these things can accurately adn musically reproduce bass. I've actually found myself really noticing subtleties in percussive instraments and performances that I had completely missed with solid-state setups... I CERTAINLY NEVER EXPECTED THIS FROM TUBES! Imagine a systems that can groove so well with Miles that guests at a cocktail party stop talking and sit fixated in front of the speakers... imagine those same guests dancing uncrontrollably to an accurate bass line and sweetest horns you've every heard coming from an old 70s Disco standard! The SLAMS can do all of this!

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-Nothing has come close...