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Capacitors for recap, anyone used these?

P

Paul-H

Active Member
Hi all

My 35 year old Pioneer A-70 Is well overdue for s recap, and after doing a little searching around on line I found a company that sells a kit for my model at a not too expensive price

Anyone used audio-high-store.com are they reliable and are the caps supplied what they claim.

This is the set they sell for the A-70

Pioneer A-70 Upgrade Kit Audio Capacitors
https://www.audio-high-store.com/product/pioneer-a-70-upgrade-kit-audio-capacitors/

€30 for 32 Nichicon audio capacitors sounds quite reasonable to me, is it too reasonable to be true.

Thanks for any help

Paul
 
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<<<watching this thread... just looked up kits for some units id like to refresh ... looks like a really good deal if its legit.
 
I am not a fan of those kits, however they do make things simple, and apparently not a bad price too. However, they get to choose what exact types of capacitors you're going to use and where. And there is also the question of how old are the capacitors they are sending you? - they may have spent several years on a shelf in a hot warehouse somewhere, thus ageing them considerably. And finally, how do you know the ones you will be getting aren't fakes or counterfeits?

Just a few things to think about before you take the plunge.

The Pioneer forum here on AK are very good at providing BOM's for recapping/reconditioning many Pioneer models, I am not sure if the A-70 is included. For other manufacturers here on AK, it is true, the availability of BOM's is much less likely.

(NB: BOM = Bill Of Materials ;))
 
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Unfortunately no listing for the A-70 in the RECAP sticky thread. I'm with Hyperion on this one. The biggest gripe I have is "how old are the caps". And the fact that they are using "audio caps" exclusively, plus they get to pick the caps.

Case in point. When I did my SX-939 a few years back I experimented using UKL, UHE, and UPW types on one channel from input to output, and UFW, UKW and Muse on the other channel. I heard NO DISCERNABLE difference between the two. The S/N on the UFW, UKW side was a db or 2 noisier, I couldn't hear it, but i could see it on a scope. Luckily I'd purchased enough of the UPW, UHE, UKL types to populate the whole rig. So out came the UFW, UKW, Muse and Fine gold. You can do better by making your own BOM for mouser (it's not that hard). And you'll probably save a few Euro's.
 
Putting together a cap list and ordering from Mouser might be similar in price all in with shipping unless you are outside the US and get free shipping at a certain buy point or chose cheap shipping of a few bucks. The standard shipping is 8 bucks. You might be buying at the single or 10 each price vs. them buying at the 100 or higher level for a big discount. Here is a comparison of a few different values of the FG Nichicons from Mouser showing quantity discounts. Different prices for different caps, larger are more money. But as you can see it is gonna be hard to pay a € a cap, they are generally way less than that.
1: $0.25
10: $0.174
25: $0.143
100: $0.105

1: $0.30
10: $0.216
25: $0.196
100: $0.13

1: $0.63
10: $0.446
25: $0.381
100: $0.294

1: $1.01
10: $0.771
25: $0.712
100: $0.551

1: $2.29
10: $1.85
100: $1.41
500: $1.08

My recent order had 4 cap sizes that were over 40¢ each but less than a € and 14 that were less so the total for 30 caps would not be much money even if I bought them as singles.

Smaller is more popular so take twice what I bought and total it up using the gross numbers in the sentence above (80¢ for the ones close to a buck) and you got 8x80¢ + 28x40¢=17.60 so the caps in a kit cost twice what they should. Very rough calculation and do not include the expensive PS caps that would be 10 per, maybe, give or take depending on selection. But those are not included in the kit either.

It may make sense to have a kit sent, depending on how little work you want to do. That 15 bucks for him putting the caps together might be well spent or not.
 
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Paul-H said:
Can't find the ReCap sticky anyone point me in the right direction.

Thanks
Click to expand...
What recap sticky? Just doing your first one? Might be less trouble buying the kit if not doing a few items. Free shipping is at 50 or 100 and 100 is a hell of a lot of caps, enough for a few receivers. Amps have less.

Now about that sticky, what was it discussing? Was it hidden in a sticky catchall at the top of a thread, projects or something?
 
My Cyrus 2 needed a recap, and I ordered from Mouser. It was not too difficult, but I had to wait for caps to arrive at Mouser. Not too expensive either, and it's fairly easy to do if you have a good desoldering tool. For the soldering part, I used Rat Shack silver bearing solder, which was a joy to use. Remember to use the amp for a while before deciding if the recap was a success or failure.
 
I like to spend some time choosing the various capacitors available from a major supplier, Mouser or Digikey. It's also fun to try them out: UKL, KA, FC, FR, KZE, Silmic II, Wimas, etc, sometimes choosing one type in a small project, or mixing them in more appropriate sections in larger projects.
 
FWIW most of the cap or restore listings on ebay are just people who read a BOM somewhere and do the shopping for you, often with a vig for their trouble. Some may even offer really cheapo caps (I wont say chinese made cuz even nichions are made there) and in many cases, they put in the mouser order and just have it shipped to you, making them like a 'Rock Audio' (get the pun? get it? huh huh?)
 
I wonder if the OP has taken the cover off and actually looked at what's inside and priced his own bom.
 
Should we trust a company that claims an Amplifiers output wattage is what's written on the the power consumption label on the back, that's screams that they don't know what they are doing

But thanks for thinking of me.
 
The kit doesn't include caps for the power supply, which in my opinion is the absolute most important and has the biggest difference in performance (including what you hear). This kit doesn't get you where you need to be.

Also, throwing all audio grade caps is a gimmick. They look pretty, they are generally bigger than normal (Muse) and make a great placebo effect. The fact is they really don't tell us specifically what makes them audio grade when comparing them to other (better) speced caps for the job. Pioneer speced caps specifically for low leakeage innareas (usually orange caps) and not one audio grade cap meets that leakage rating (KL does).

Using Nichicon audio grade for everything is wrong and them selling a cap kit with nothing but audio grade makes me cringe a bit. I will admit, I did this when I first started. It's logical to think audio device = audio caps.
 
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