I am attempting to put an order together to re-cap a nice receiver with Elna's. The first thing I can't find any 10,000uf/63v Elna or even smaller Elna's. It looks like Nichicon is my best bet. When I compare specs between the audio grade Nichicon and other Nichicon's they seem to be inferior on all parameters! One of the 10,000uf/63v Nichicon's top is definitely bulging in my 35 year old receiver. I also don't know about the snap mounting and what I have to do to use them in older 80's equipment through hole radial.
Snap mounting uses larger terminals shaped so they snap into a hole of the right size.
However, the required hole for the snap in caps is larger than the plain radial lead hole.
You would have to enlarge the holes and patch the traces to fit the snap in caps.
Or, you could make a sub-board the connects to the existing pcb holes.
I buy for long service life, not "audio" discription. The premium ones, 3000 hour life and better, have all had adequate ESR for my purposes. Organ amps, PA amps, hifi amps. I view Panasonic, Nichicon, Rubicon as the first line caps, United chemicon, CDE, and multicomp as the second line. Look at the ripple spec at "end of life" and see who is "polishing the wax on the apple" on the datasheet for "service life" to make their parts look better.
Any cap that is >20 years old and not sealed with epoxy, is subject to seal failure. Even if the end is not visibly leaky. I've seen a lot of nichicon caps in industrial motor drives from the burner box of ovens where they run at 150 deg F for 10 years or more until the drive frames are all worn out and they scrap the oven. I think I had one Nichicon that popped a top, of the dozen 400 uf 400 v ones in every drive. I had 5 or 6 salvaged drives, mostly they get the SCR's or Triacs blown up by the high pressure water hoses of the cleanup crew.
I've got a whole lot of Allen organ fans on another website that are convinced the Allen amps after 1974 never have problems. Certainly never e-cap problems. I just put new e-caps in a 1979 Allen organ, originally Sangamo 14000 uf 40v caps. No obvious problems, but the organ went silent in a performance, and the next Monday the wattage out was 2, from a pair of 100 W @ 4 ohms amp. Classic sign of leaky power supply rail caps. Wattage out after new caps was >20, I didn't walk downstairs to get the analog meter to make a good reading. It was loud enough after to show the speakers had cone suspension problems, too. New caps were CDE, my supplier went out of stock on Panasonic ECO between bidding the repair and getting approval to spend the money.
Any cap that is >20 years old and not sealed with epoxy, is subject to seal failure. Even if the end is not visibly leaky. I've seen a lot of nichicon caps in industrial motor drives from the burner box of ovens where they run at 150 deg F for 10 years or more until the drive frames are all worn out and they scrap the oven. I think I had one Nichicon that popped a top, of the dozen 400 uf 400 v ones in every drive. I had 5 or 6 salvaged drives, mostly they get the SCR's or Triacs blown up by the high pressure water hoses of the cleanup crew.
I've got a whole lot of Allen organ fans on another website that are convinced the Allen amps after 1974 never have problems. Certainly never e-cap problems. I just put new e-caps in a 1979 Allen organ, originally Sangamo 14000 uf 40v caps. No obvious problems, but the organ went silent in a performance, and the next Monday the wattage out was 2, from a pair of 100 W @ 4 ohms amp. Classic sign of leaky power supply rail caps. Wattage out after new caps was >20, I didn't walk downstairs to get the analog meter to make a good reading. It was loud enough after to show the speakers had cone suspension problems, too. New caps were CDE, my supplier went out of stock on Panasonic ECO between bidding the repair and getting approval to spend the money.
I am not saying that Nichicon's are bad by any means. But why can't I find the Elna's that Nelson Pass seems to prefer. The unit is a WONDERFUL SR4a made by Nakamichi that uses a Pass Stassis amplifier circuit that was licensed to Nakamichi in the 80's. Thank you for all your help. So what you are saying is use higher quality caps in power supplies, and Elna's in the audio signal path. I have plenty of room to drill holes in the existing PSB.
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