Some Recap Questions---Using ALL UPW's

69sixpackbee

Well-Known Member
I have compiled a list of caps to redo my Toshiba SA-7150. With the ever-increasing depletion of Panasonic FC/FM not to mention the limited selection any more in "common" smaller sizes, I have resorted this time to use Nichicon UPW's entirely everywhere. I did, however, still use some ECQ-V's for anything less than 1mfd and have used Silmic II's and Muse's in the path.

I have used in the past, Panasonic FM/FC's most everywhere in the and kept the Nichicon PW's and Vishay 138 primarily in the P.S. with a dabbling of ECQ-V's and Silmic II's, and/or Nichicon KZ & FG in the audio path with good results. I have subscribed to the notion, like some others have eluded to, that most ANY, high quality-low ESR cap has got to be better than anything that is in your 30+ year-old gear. I have stayed away from some high dollar "boutique" caps and closely followed the ever-informative and quite lengthy post that PatFont did a while back on his "state of the art" series, not to mention the teachings by EW and MTF.

There are surprisingly very few caps in this monster which should make it a pleasure to undertake.
Can anyone concur or vehemently oppose my thinking here?

Thanx for your opinions!

Bud
 
Your choices are about the same as mine in restorations of two amps, and I think they are great choices. I stay with Nichicon for the most part, and FM/FC when I should/can.
 
Makes sense to me. The Panasonic ECQ-V parts, at least the ones I've got, seem to be Panasonic mystery film- I don't know if they actually say, though maybe I missed it. My guess is it's polyester, but it tends to measure a bit better than other polyester film caps. No problems at all with sound quality at all, though I do try to use polypropylene for higher voltages and where it will fit. The ECQ-V parts tend to be small and fit more easily, having less stray capacitance to surrounding stuff.
 
Makes sense to me. The Panasonic ECQ-V parts, at least the ones I've got, seem to be Panasonic mystery film- I don't know if they actually say, though maybe I missed it. My guess is it's polyester, but it tends to measure a bit better than other polyester film caps. No problems at all with sound quality at all, though I do try to use polypropylene for higher voltages and where it will fit. The ECQ-V parts tend to be small and fit more easily, having less stray capacitance to surrounding stuff.

Hiya, Mr.H!
I see, however, that Panasonic is starting it's "planned obsolescence" of the ECQ-V's and are pushing the new ECW-F(D) series. I wonder how these would "stack" up (LOL) against their preceding units?
 
Hiya, Mr.H!
I see, however, that Panasonic is starting it's "planned obsolescence" of the ECQ-V's and are pushing the new ECW-F(D) series. I wonder how these would "stack" up (LOL) against their preceding units?

No, I think they are getting out of the through hole capacitor business.
 
Any caps that are orange or light blue then I would replace with Nichicon KLs instead of the PWs.

^^ what he said ^^

Also, if you have access to the schematic, have a look where the cap actually is. If one side of the cap goes to ground, or 0v, chances are it's bypassing something and can be a PW. If it carries a signal from one stage to the next, you might want to replace it with a KL. These are usually the orange Elnas, blue Sanyo, or green Towa caps.

Lee.
 
I have a real clear schematic that I even red-lined for the FM and audio paths. I followed it and made the appropriate choices based on their function but you guys have enlightened me a bit. The BOM in the service manual was also very concise and made reference to all "low noise" caps where applicable. I went through the list and made changes based on the signal path usage of caps and made them all like types. Interestingly enough, Toshiba used not one Tant in the whole array! One less to substitute. I do have a difference in the idle voltages that I am hoping this will rectify. With both R & L trimmers to full CCW I can only get the left channel down to 7mV and the spec is for 5. The right channel is stuck at 18mV. Try this first then I will attack the drivers next.
4990cd3b0117198e18b43c94341e3259.jpg



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I have compiled a list of caps to redo my Toshiba SA-7150. With the ever-increasing depletion of Panasonic FC/FM not to mention the limited selection any more in "common" smaller sizes, I have resorted this time to use Nichicon UPW's entirely everywhere. I did, however, still use some ECQ-V's for anything less than 1mfd and have used Silmic II's and Muse's in the path.

I have used in the past, Panasonic FM/FC's most everywhere in the and kept the Nichicon PW's and Vishay 138 primarily in the P.S. with a dabbling of ECQ-V's and Silmic II's, and/or Nichicon KZ & FG in the audio path with good results. I have subscribed to the notion, like some others have eluded to, that most ANY, high quality-low ESR cap has got to be better than anything that is in your 30+ year-old gear. I have stayed away from some high dollar "boutique" caps and closely followed the ever-informative and quite lengthy post that PatFont did a while back on his "state of the art" series, not to mention the teachings by EW and MTF.

There are surprisingly very few caps in this monster which should make it a pleasure to undertake.
Can anyone concur or vehemently oppose my thinking here?

Thanx for your opinions!

Bud
This is some of my Go To Brands I use through out my Recaps:
Nichicon PW/PM, FG, KL, VX(Axial), KG (Main Caps)
Panasonic FR/FM/FC
Jensen Main Caps
Mundorf Main and Films
EPCOS Main Caps
Vishay/BC Main and Board
ELNA Silmic II
Panasonic ECQ Films
WIMA Films

Will Not use:
Nichicon KZ Muse...I find them Mushy/Bloated sounding.

Also, if you have access to the schematic, have a look where the cap actually is. If one side of the cap goes to ground, or 0v, chances are it's bypassing something and can be a PW. If it carries a signal from one stage to the next, you might want to replace it with a KL. These are usually the orange Elnas, blue Sanyo, or green Towa caps.

Lee.
X's 2 ^^ what he said ^^
 
I found these little violet beauties (there are four total) tucked away in the Dolby board which, BTW, is not even listed in the BOM of the service manual! There are 13 caps in all that didn't make it on the list. So much for being concise. There are several other omissions that are not there so I have to scour a bit deeper. With regard to the Dolby board, the violet caps are .33uf/50v units, C225,226,231 & 232. I was thinking of replacing these with ECQ-V's as well. Or, would you recommend sticking with a like size/tolerance KL?

Thanx,
Bud
 

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I found these little violet beauties (there are four total) tucked away in the Dolby board which, BTW, is not even listed in the BOM of the service manual! There are 13 caps in all that didn't make it on the list. So much for being concise. There are several other omissions that are not there so I have to scour a bit deeper. With regard to the Dolby board, the violet caps are .33uf/50v units, C225,226,231 & 232. I was thinking of replacing these with ECQ-V's as well. Or, would you recommend sticking with a like size/tolerance KL?

Thanx,
Bud

Use the film caps. Much better than any electrolytic.
 
The dolby board is a obsolete short lived FM experiment that never took off. My Sa-7100 has it also. I would not spend much or worry about the type of caps for it.

I had to laugh when you said low cap count, The 7100 had 71 caps to replace.

Also, I found that two caps on the amp board where Bi-polar that were not listed. That was a pain to reorder to caps.
 
....I had to laugh when you said low cap count, The 7100 had 71 caps to replace.

.


After doing a Marantz 4400, two Realistic STA-2100's and a couple of Pioneer SX-1250's believe me, this is a breath of fresh air!

Thanx for the advice. I had compiled the BOM and ordered up the stuff from Mouser this evening. I went ahead and got replacement metal oxide resistors to swap our the fuse resistors as well. I got two new Bournes 500 ohm trimmers to replace the 330 ohm ones for the idle adjustment. I too got new sets of complementary pre-drivers because I can see where the board has gotten a bit warm around them just in case I need to swap em out. Finish it off with re-greasing the outputs and with new mica insulators and I'm good to go.
All in all, with new snap in caps stuffed inside the OEM cans and bypassed with a 2.2 uF Panasonic poly cap the whole schmeer ran me right at about $100.00.

I'm way ahead of this one with only an $85.00 initial investment.

Can't wait to start on it!

Thanx again everyone!


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No, I think they are getting out of the through hole capacitor business.
Oh jeeze really. I just stocked up on Panasonic FC's and labeled a ton of parts bins. Guess I'll have to make Nichicon PW labels to put over them, hehe.
 
Someone had better post some documentation stating that Panasonic is getting out of the through-hole capacitor business instead of just making people paranoid. I can't find anything to that effect online.
 
Seems crazy to me for them to abandon a business which if you follow mouser's supply counts sells an awful lot of capacitors. Plenty of electronics are still using thru hole and the Pana's are of excellent quality.
 
^^ what he said ^^

Also, if you have access to the schematic, have a look where the cap actually is. If one side of the cap goes to ground, or 0v, chances are it's bypassing something and can be a PW. If it carries a signal from one stage to the next, you might want to replace it with a KL. These are usually the orange Elnas, blue Sanyo, or green Towa caps.

Lee.
A bit along the line Lee is getting at, I have found the following when replacing/not replacing caps in these vintage units. (I use a peak/Atlas Cap/ESR tester) These testers are great because you can test most caps in circuit.
Large primary caps I will replace if they are outside of their 20% tolerance, or have an ESR greater than .5 ohm
Smaller caps used on boards other than PS regulator that have one leg to 0 volts are usually still well within tolerance and usually have very low ESR (below 1 ohm) If they look good I leave them be. the low value caps used to pass signal from one stage to the other (below 1uf up to 10 uf), usually drift well above their tolerance, and many time have higher ESR (1.5 to 10ohm +). I almost always replace all of these with whatever quality Nichicon, Panasonic, Elna's etc I have, but I always match them as best as possible using my peak/atlas meter. I have always stayed with electrolytic as replacements, not going exotic as other do.
I almost always replace all caps on the regulator boards as well as the TO220 transistors, because most have been subject to high heat conditions. I do use high temp caps on the regulator board if I have them.
My thought is that I want to replace the bad stuff, but I don't want to replace things that worked fine for 40 years, and are well within spec, with a newer component, that may not work as well, or as long as the originals. I know all about drying out of caps, and had worked in the Data Center business for over 30 years. Many Capacitors are used in UPS (uninterruptable power supply) modules supplying conditioned power to all of the technology systems in large data centers. The UPS engineers identify these capacitors as being a time change item, and don't trust them after they age 5 years or more, so they put programs in place to replace all of them every 5 - 7 years. I am talking like 100 per module.
In my career, I can recall 1 to 2 times a cap failed in a ups system and resulted in an outage of a module or a failure of power to the it load.
but I remember probably 5 to 10 time a cap failed in a ups system and resulted in an outage of a module or a failure of power to the it load within a few weeks after capacitor replacements.
Just my opinion
Tom
Tom
 
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In my career, I can recall 1 to 2 times a cap failed in a ups system and resulted in an outage of a module or a failure of power to the it load.
but I remember probably 5 to 10 time a cap failed in a ups system and resulted in an outage of a module or a failure of power to the it load within a few weeks after capacitor replacements.
Just my opinion
Tom
Tom

When did that occur, and where were the caps sourced from? There was an infamous run of bad capacitors about 10 or so years ago that caused all sorts of headaches for quite some time.
 
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