[HAM] Capacitors

[Scott Hawthorn]

At 03:42 PM 2/17/2008, Jordan Kersten wrote:
>Yea, the Orange Drops are cheap.  Would there be any reason to use Sprague 
>Atom Electrolycits?  Those are the expensive ones.  I had an AO-10 preamp 
>with the power supply caps replaced with Sprague Atom caps and I loved the 
>tone.  Would there be an advantage to using these vs. cheaper 
>electrolytics?-Jordan-

I try to use good quality electrolytics, at least brands I have heard of 
before  :-)

I don't know enough about electrical engineering to testify one way or the 
other about power caps affecting the tone-quality, but my instincts and my 
somewhat limited training tell me that such claims would be bogus. I'm open 
to learning about that however. On the other hand, I did work on one AO-28 
that was "motorboating" and it was NOT the scanner or even the vibrato 
system at all. It was one of the electrolytics, and it checked-out in terms 
of shorts and leakage. The high voltage coming off that cap was fluctuating 
wildly for some reason. I would not stint on something so fundamental to 
the correct operation and safety of the amp. Eight bucks for a cap for a 
multi-thousand-dollar instrument? You bet!

For the small ceramic disc caps, I often use the slightly more expensive, 
but bulletproof, dipped silver mica caps. They come in lots of sizes and 
will probably last forever. There's not really much call, in this amp, for 
the size of caps covered by orange drops, though a few would be 
appropriate, like the .02 or .033 coupling caps for instance, or the two 
bigass ones underneath the board there, what are they, .33s?







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