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Full Recap or Partial ??

C

Califmike33

Well-Known Member
I have a Technics SA-300 and i want to recap it and make it more reliable, it is 45 years old, but its in mint cosmetic condition. I do know how to solder and mess with a little bit of electronics. Im not paying someone $500 to recap it.

Been reading about full recap all Capacitors, or just partial recap, love to hear you vintage guys opinion on this. I found a kit on ebay that is a deluxe upgrade kit $60 comes with parts for amp, phone and powersupply area, but its not a full recap. Another seller on ebay sales a kit $145 and says you have to do a full recap or nothing and the other seller is selling your cheap parts and bad customer service. Opinions are welcome.
 
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Califmike33 said:
I have a Technics SA-300 and i want to recap it and make it more reliable, it is 45 years old, but its in mint cosmetic condition. I do know how to solder and mess with a little bit of electronics. Im not paying someone $500 to recap it.

Been reading about full recap all Capacitors, or just partial recap, love to hear you vintage guys opinion on this. I found a kit on ebay that is a deluxe upgrade kit $60 comes with parts for amp, phone and powersupply area, but its not a full recap. Another seller on ebay sales a kit $145 and says you have to do a full recap or nothing and the other seller is selling your cheap parts and bad customer service. Opinions are welcome.
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To start I'd worry about the sections of the amp that pertain to your listening habits (i.e. power, phono, eq). I'd personally go power, pre, amp...since I don't use tone controls. I'd also review what each "kit" comes with and price it out myself using Mouser.com.
 
Ok thanks, im trying to price it out myself not going well when i put the part number nothing comes up, but i was on Digi Key.

Tried Mouser.com and parts i punch in off the service manual dont come up?????
 
Parts come and go. Try searching the ##s here. Lots of people have figured out swaps for a lot of discontinued parts. If they aren't you can look at the specs of the old parts and look for new with similar specs.
 
Tried here no results hmmmmmmmm. I guess when you buy a kit all the work is done for you, but am i getting good quality parts.
 
When you start, take pictures of the areas your gong to recap. Mark the negative side of the cap on the PCB with a sharpie before removing it. Schematics and the silk screening on the board can be wrong. I've run into errors with both multiple times. Only recap one area or board at a time and test to make sure everything is working before going to the next area. That way if something is a miss, you know the area to check. Digital and Mouser can be difficult at first to navigate until you get the hang of it. Mouser has been easier for me, some prefer Digikey.
 
How does it sound now? And...the obvious followup question...if it sounds good now, why assume anything is wrong?

I don't mean to be glib... I kind of suffer from the same disease, or literally, "lack of ease." I have a lot of old equipment that I see cap kits for, am more than acutely aware that old caps fail, and strongly feel the pull of similar available kits. However, on the two occasions I've succumbed to that urge, either all or almost all of the old caps measured fine, and there was no discernible improvement in sound. FWIW, I am NOT a casual listener; I've done quite a bit of professional recording drom both sides of the mic.
 
There is nothing wrong with a partial recap, I do that professionally all the time. And nothing wrong with a full recap (but you'll find lot of threads here at AK about amplifiers that don't work after a DIY recap). And of course, if an amplifier is working fine, you can assume most of the capacitors are still OK, so nothing wrong with leaving it alone and wait for something to fail, and do the recap once you are there to really fix something.
 
Califmike33 said:
Ok thanks, im trying to price it out myself not going well when i put the part number nothing comes up, but i was on Digi Key.

Tried Mouser.com and parts i punch in off the service manual dont come up?????
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Neither Digikey or Mouser or anyone else will recognize manufacturers part numbers.
 
Took pictures I've made a mark with a negative side is trying to remove a couple big capacitors the biggest ones in the whole amp near the power supply running into a problem. Have unsoldered it used wick and the solder sucker I can't get it to come loose is it possible there's glue holding this to the PCB? It won't come loose for nothing I'm afraid I'm going to crack the board.
 
Okay I got my first capacitor out it had glue on it that's why it wasn't coming out I had to wiggle it and wiggle it and wiggle it finally got it.

Question should I glue the new ones in? And what kind of glue do I use?
 
The glue isn't really needed. I never use it, and most others don't either. I think it was done mostly due to the equipment getting bounced around in shipping. You can add a couple dabs of hot glue at the base of the big filter caps if there is any movement when the caps are soldered in if you like. I just use low temp glue sticks and a cheap low temp gun I got at a hobby store.
I do use hot glue sometimes when replacing caps in speaker crossovers. You get vibrations from the speaker drivers and new film caps can be much bigger than the original electrolytic caps used. Plus some of the glues they used back then wound up being corrosive and corroding the leads on the caps. Once you get an edge pulled up, the old glue usually peelss off the board.
 
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Ok thanks for the tip. Im holding off putting the big caps back in from the kit i bought cause i want to price everthing out myself and see how much it comes to. Some people on ebay have said the seller i bought from uses cheap parts. So i know Nichicon are good, Panasonic, what other brands ? i have a mix of parts in my kit and wondering if there any good. It does have some Nichicon, Panasonic, Wima film caps.
 
Kemit, Mundorf, United Chemcon, Cornel Dublier, Vishey, and many others. :D
What other brands were in the kit?
 
The glue is mostly for the bigger parts to stay put while the board travels through the factory wave soldering process.
 
Lavane said:
Kemit, Mundorf, United Chemcon, Cornel Dublier, Vishey, and many others. :D
What other brands were in the kit?
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Wima film caps, CDE, Nichicon, and alot of caps that are blue with a gold stripe down the side and blue with like a greenish gold, but no name on them.

Thinking maybe write down all the parts i bought in the kit and buy new ones on my own but all top notch ?, seems to be some good parts in the kit.
 
The orange Epcos Sikorel caps are fine.
The small ones look like Nichicon, but the color is off though. If your worried about the small greenish caps, you could re-order different ones to be sure. But all the other brands you mentioned and the orange Sikorel caps should be good to go.
 
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