Jamicon Capacitors - will replacing them improve sound quality?

[guitarobert]

I have a Boss guitar multieffects unit that is full of Jamicon caps. A quick google search shows that Jamicons have a reputation for poor audio quality.

Would it make an improvement in overall audio quality if I were to replace these with another brand of capacitor? There are 2 types of Jamicon cap in this unit:

100uF / 16V Jamicon SV
10uF / 16V Jamicon SV

The data sheet for these can be found here:
http://www.jamicon.com.tw/WebApplica...pacitor/SV.pdf

I'd appreciate any recommendations for a particular brand/model of cap to replace these with as well.

I recently modded a Boss pedal by changing out a few caps and op-amps, and I'm impressed with the difference in tone it made. I'd love to do the same for this unit if it will help.

Thanks,
Bob

[motherone]

There's a ton of different boutique caps you can get. What's your budget?

[guitarobert]

There are 40 caps in total (20 of each of the 2 types), and I'm not sure if all of them need to be replaced. For a sizeable sound quality improvement I'd be willing to spend around $100 ($2.50 per cap). Any thoughts with this number in mind?

Regards,
Bob

[motherone]

I'd probably look at the Nichicon Muse ES (bipolars), Elna Silmic II's, or Black Gates. Those are the most popular brands that I see used in these types of applications.

The only place I know of that stocks the Nichicon Muse ES's is Hand Made Electronics (hndme.com, I think). At that rating/voltage, you're looking at $0.24 per cap for the 10uF/16v, and $0.36 for the 100uF/16v.

For Elna Silmic's, you can get those at a number of places. Hand Made stocks a few of them, but Digikey actually has a pretty big selection to choose from.

Finally, most people say that Black Gates are the best electrolytic caps out there, rivalling film caps in many cases. They're also expensive, sometimes bordering on ridiculous. There's a number of different product lines within the Black Gate brand, with most folks choosing the BG-N and BG-NX as the best, as they're non-polar caps. You can get black gates at a LOT of specialty places, including:

Partsconnexion.com
Percyaudio.com
Soniccraft.com

I recently bought a few from Sonic Craft and they shipped quick with no issues.

That said, think about where you'll be using the caps. I would use the best possible electrolytics in cathode bypass or other signal path applications. So for that, get the BG-N's for those. For the remainder, you could go with Nichicon Muse KZ's or even Panasonic FMs (stocked at digikey, very nice caps with an ultra-low ESR) for the power supplies. That will probably save you quite a bit of money, too.

Anyways, do some searches on here for the caps. A ton of people have posted previous topics on them, and it should be pretty easy to find their threads and draw your own conclusions about what direction to go.

Good luck!

[guitarobert]

Thanks so much for the advice! If the Nichicon Muse ES is a reasonable choice I think I'll go that route since the price looks good. I'm not sure which of these caps apply to the audio signal path and which apply to power, but a full set of Muse ES's looks like it'll only be around $15. That's not too bad.

Of course, if I knew how to figure out which caps are most important I could probably be convinced to spend the extra money on the Black Gates! But if the Nichicons will give a boost to sound quality by themselves I'm happy to go that route.

Thanks again! Your help is very much appreciated.

Regards,
Bob

[motherone]

A lot of folks use the Muse ES caps instead of the Black Gate BG-N/NX's due to them being fairly close in performance, but far less expensive in cost.

Good luck with your mods! If you get a chance, post pictures when you complete them and let us know how it sounds!

[guitarobert]

Sounds good! Sorry, but one final question since I noticed a dimensional issue.

There's only around 10mm of clearance if the capacitors are mounted on the same side of the PCB that they are currently on. However, if I put them on the "bottom" of the PCB there is more than 15mm of clearance. It looks like I'll need to mount them on the bottom of the PCB because the 100uF Muses are 12.5mm high.

Since I'm a beginner DIYer, I'm curious if this something that is advised against. The only complication is that the solder will be on the same side as the cap. However, the distance between the pin holes is fairly large (5mm) so it seems like there's enough room to work with even with the cap there while soldering.

I'll happily post pictures but please no flames if it looks awful as I'm a newbie.

Thanks again,
Bob

[motherone]

No, that shouldn't be a problem. You can also get creative with lead bending to get the caps to lay parallel to the PCB. But, mounting on the bottom shouldn't be an issue as long as there's solder pads that will reach, or if you mount the caps up a little bit to make sure you can get underneath and solder the leads to the PCB.

Also, you will want to make sure the caps don't touch the case if it's metal. A lot of times the exposed metal area on top of the caps (but under the heatshrink) will be tied to one of the leads, so you could cause a short.

[guitarobert]

Thanks again, I appreciate your help. I'll place an order and post back in a couple of weeks.

Regards,
Bob

[guitarobert]

Update here..

I received the Nichicon Muse ES caps and installed them. Wow! It made a remarkable improvement! There is a lot more clarity on the high end. My main complaint with this multieffects unit was that it was removing the high end and dulling up the sound, but that has now been fixed with this change.

The caps all fit on the bottom side of the PCB without touching any part of the case. I took before/after photos and will post them.

Thank you motherone for all of your help. I'm really impressed with what this change did - and all for $12 plus the cost of solder.

The only drawback is that I have the "bug" now and I started taking apart other devices to see what can be replaced.

Looks like Boss uses Jamicons widely. I have an older Boss EQ pedal that also has Jamicon caps in it. I replaced one of them with a spare from this project and have the other 2 values coming in later this week.

Thanks again! Pictures coming in the next post.