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old capacitors (in their day) vs new

Blue Shadow said:
Seems the OP has jumped the shark and is dissing one of our respecteds. He probably earned an ignore for that.

Curious if he has done his homework on that cap that he claims is a repair payment waiting to happen and if Nichicon made the same size cap at the time when the amp was built. His attack shows his newbness but what the heck. He'll learn.
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Well, poo. I try to encourage civility here. Sometimes it takes, other times not so much.

Remember, everyone - All Audio, No Attitude.
 
Part of growing up is when you realize you don't know nearly what you thought you did. Even a bigger part when you admit it. I'm always learning.
 
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Blue Shadow said:
Seems the OP has jumped the shark and is dissing one of our respecteds. He probably earned an ignore for that.

Curious if he has done his homework on that cap that he claims is a repair payment waiting to happen and if Nichicon made the same size cap at the time when the amp was built. His attack shows his newbness but what the heck. He'll learn.
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i didnt attack him. he attacked me saying hes sure the filter caps arent crap when he hasnt even seen the crappy 6 filter caps that are sitting there bad.

just because he knows jim fosgate doesnt mean he knows his company didnt put crap filter caps in a car amplifier to keep it from burning itself up.

if protection circuiry trips when it sees a difference in voltage, then it trips when the filter caps go bad huh?

probably an easy way to make sure the protection circuitry works and the amp doesnt just keep blasting heat into the much more expensive repairs that burning output transistors leads to

but since he knows jim fosgate, the amp definitely doesnt have crap filter caps in it.................
 
dont tell me what i seem prone to. dont tell me how im acting. thats not what this is about. if you have factual information that trumps mine then use it and ill shut up but so far all you have done is speculate as to why there is no way there are crap filter caps in a car amplifier when they are the only generic part of the amp and the only part thats bad...

sounds like dude was just trying to start an arguement!
 
when i see 6 no name capacitors bulged and fxcked, and the rest of the amp is fine, its a no brainer the filter caps are ****.

its not like they had to be nichicon, but they are NAMELESS
 
being a manufacturer, id much rather one of my products have shitty filter caps that go bad and trip protection circuitry without burning anything up/setting anything on fire like idk the car its sitting in
 
but hey, no way they were crappy filter caps.. he knows jim fosgate, so they couldnt be crappy filter caps
 
yotems said:
but hey, no way they were crappy filter caps.. he knows jim fosgate, so they couldnt be crappy filter caps
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Listen, yotems, we're glad you're here. You have knowledge to add to this site. Just remember, All Audio, No Attitude, is a two-way street.

Tit-for-tat pissiness benefits no one.
I hope that you can enjoy this fine site, and realize that we're all enthusiasts. In other words, we're all like-minded.
You can share your opinions without resorting to mudslinging.
 
i cant if other people cant. he showed up and slung the mud so i threw it right back at him. i dont care for people like him whether they know somethin or not. he can keep his opinions to himself if he doesnt have anything factual to share

he started an argument out of pure speculation and did nothing to prove any of his claims

being in the industry for 35 years and knowing jim fosgate doesnt mean you know the RF 550s didnt use crappy filter caps as a preventative measure in terms of liability

maybe he felt obligated to give his opinion that he "doesnt think" rockford fosgate would do that, but he doesnt know for sure.

what i know for sure is the amp has 6 nameless filter caps. those 6 nameless caps are bad. those 6 nameless caps are also the only thing in the amplifier thats bad. its in protection with a heartbeat because thats its protection mode. smoothing caps no longer holding proper voltage from being crap caps may have saved some rusty honda civic from going up in flames

doesnt change the fact that the filter caps are crap
 
might as well lock the thread at this point, no more valuable information can be attained from what has happened now
 
I'm sorry you feel that way. Bad caps are bad caps.

On this site, many, many times, I've had to keep a lid on it. To me, it's worth it. Very rarely will I be able to convince someone if they're entrenched on their beliefs/opinions.

Take care.
 
lets say as an example if they were indeed crappy caps installed and it went into protect because of them then fair play for a good protect circuit .
bit i dont understand if they were good ones it could set a honda civic on fire .
 
onwardjames said:
I'm sorry you feel that way. Bad caps are bad caps.

On this site, many, many times, I've had to keep a lid on it. To me, it's worth it. Very rarely will I be able to convince someone if they're entrenched on their beliefs/opinions.

Take care.
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i dont plan on convincing him of ****, if someone came in here and showed me i was wrong and why i was for sure wrong without being an asshole about it, id be like "cool man, thanks for the information"
petehall347 said:
lets say as an example if they were indeed crappy caps installed and it went into protect because of them then fair play for a good protect circuit .
bit i dont understand if they were good ones it could set a honda civic on fire .
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if the amp was driven into overheating to the point of burning through a board/ transistors and shorting out creating a spark to ignite things or just intense heat to catch things on fire

all theoretical but so was everything mr tenured know it all said except he just HAD to point out how quickly i am to jump to conclusions

maybe i just share my ideas in hopes people come in and correct me? i never said i knew anything

the filter caps seem like crap to me from every experience ive ever had with cheap hardware of any sort, but thats not the point. they could be good filter caps and i could be wrong

he didnt really explain why. he speculated that nichicon just didnt have the right cap or jim fosgate just wouldnt let that happen when thats a very piss poor explanation coming from some 35 year tenured individual.

maybe had he not entered the topic the way he did, he wouldnt have gotten the response he did.

being a 35 year veteran he should know how to share information by now without being a d!ckhead about it
 
anyway back on topic .
i was wondering if anyone had prematurely aged any new production caps somehow and worked out life expectancy in years ?
 
petehall347 said:
anyway back on topic .
i was wondering if anyone had prematurely aged any new production caps somehow and worked out life expectancy in years ?
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with how many variables are at play with the aging of a capacitor that may be a tough thing to get accurate results from since we dont have any vintage caps with fresh values from the factory as well. unless the vintage capacitors being compared to had a recorded history of use or recorded history of sitting on a shelf, it would be hard to find out these things unless someone has datasheets of that kind of testing from back when they were made.

personally i feel like quality capacitors of today will last just as long but i dont have any real experience backing up that assertion
 
jdurbin1 said:
You seem prone to jumping to conclusions based on limited data. Among other things, unlike car dealers there is really no "profit center" for repairing car amps. Just not enough money in it to make it a corporate objective, unlike car service which often produces more profit for a car dealer than selling cars. If they're using crap parts there are plenty of other more likely reasons including focus on cost vs. reliability, poor quality sourcing, vendors subbing lower quality parts, etc. etc.

You also seem prone to generalizations based on limited data. Do some car amplifiers have crap caps in them? Sure, more than likely. Does that mean it's universally the case? No, not at all.

I suppose to some extent I am also guilty of both with my comment above on low profile caps... but, at least it was an opinion based on a lot of different examples I've encountered of those failures over decades of exposure. There's a whole generation of Toyota OEM car radios that loses audio due to one of those caps leaking and eroding the mute control trace so badly it goes open circuit, as another example. You can pretty much count on that happening to every one of those radios, over time.

However, I am sure there are lots of examples of more normal profile caps leaking and no real statistics to back it up one way or another. Still, when you see a particular design over and and over again and the other normal caps - even the ones in the "runs hot" power supply don't physically leak over 20-30 years but a high percentage of the low profile ones do, it does beg the question.

John
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my apologies for being an asshole and continuing to sling mud
 
What I'm baffled by is the fact that caps have gotten smaller, yet every time I go to recap a crossover, the ones I replace WITH are usually tomato soup cans, lol.

Is there really any point to having a 400+volt cap for a crossover??:idea::dunno:
 
Some questions raised in this discussion could be answered by the info I've gathered, as in my previous post which was in the middle of a heated discussion and probably overlooked. BTW, the brands of those bad caps are revealed in a wikipedia article which I used as part of my research; that may be useful to ID ones that yet or have already failed.

Freds.Bands said:
Electrolytic caps are now much smaller because of the greatly improved anode etching methods. That larger surface ares means greater capacitance per cubic centimeter. Another thing: low ESR caps are those with high water content in the electrolyte, invented in Japan by Rubycon, but water without proper stabilizers eats away at the aluminum electrodes, causing those to fail with short life spans; unless those low ESR caps have the proper chemical stabilizers (among the hundreds of formulas), they will fail while in short service. This what happened in the early 2000s to those failed computer motherboards with certain Taiwanese low ESR caps. (ConradH is once again right on the money.)

I just finished summarizing the two major wikipedia articles on electrolytics (eliminating the chemistry and math).The above is just a sample of what is in the article.

I would post the long article on AK, but I do not know in what area to post it/them.
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The new one ones are in spec and the old ones out. This results in a cleaner sound.

As I see it, around 77.4714% of people hate clean sound. They like distortion, flabby bloated bass, mismatched crossover points and we could extend this discussion to digital vs. analog and so on and so forth.

But here we are, everyone trust your own ears do do what you like. Might not be true that old caps (whos tolerances where pretty crappy compared to today, no matter what it says "on the side") are in any way better at all, but if ya like it, roll with it!

If its bigger, its usually better. If its heavier, its also better. If you fiddle with it, its sounds better. If you wax your car, its more efficient and faster.


This post had no attitude with a flavoring of sadness.
 
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