Petp Capacitors-one Of The Best?

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I wanted to share with the rest of the DIY community my experience with these capacitors, as I believe they are fantastic bargains bettering IMHO a lot of the exotica out there, but costing 'pennies'.

I first discovered them on EBAY several years ago, sold mostly out of the Eastern European/Russian community. I believe they are of military origin and in true fashion appear to be put together really well. I have been using them for several years now and have extensive experience with them. They are still sold as bulk buys on EBAY and cost 'pennies'

These caps mostly run from .001 to 22uf and voltages up to 1200v. They can therefore be used for tube projects as well as solid state.

I have used them in every type of electronic circuit that I have come across in my diy hifi adventures. They have never dissapointed. They bring great detail and neutrality to proceedings. But rather than go on about their sound i can perhaps best sum up their sound by the comparisons I have done with them

Audio note tin foil caps- petp was more dynamic and more detailed sounding probably equal in most other areas.

Jenson paper in oil caps - again a very similar finding

Sanyo's Oscon,the sanyo's sounded slower and less dynamic in comparison

Mundorf silver - the PETP matched it for detail and I believe was less strident and aggressive at the top end.

Black Gates - very similar sonic character, but the black gates had the edge for inner tonal detail.

Russian Teflon and PIO - again very similar finding as for the audionote and jenson paper in oils described above.


Still one of the best caps i have ever used for application in speaker crossover in which they are as good as if not better than the non polar black gates that cost a fortune.

The only capacitor I would probably prefer are the Audionote Copper paper in oils but not by a great margin. They tame the top end , bringing in more refinement and naturalness to the top end and midrange. So I guess if i were to criticise them then the top end needs to be matched a bit.

One of the all time great bargains in my book!
 
Ah, this is very interesting thing indeed. I was just about to spend a silly amount on 2 of those copper caps!

Is there any diffarence between the K73 -16, 11 and the P4 types.
Also, it seems Rifa has/is making caps with the PETP dialectric according to the eBay China source, yes?

It's curious to see the difference in price between the Latvian, Russian and other countries for the perhaps same caps. As usual, it's ther damn freight that's the killer.
 
I use mostly K73-16 but have used the others as well and have not been sure of a significant difference. The military PIO (which i see used on DIYaudio)are absolutely no where near the quality of the PETP's, which by the way are non polar.

I just bought 30 1uf 600v at 15us cents a piece, audionote tin/aluminium are over $30 each and the copper ones are $100 each. the Mundorf silvers are not far off those prices as are the jensens!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
audiojoy said:
as good as if not better than the non polar black gates that cost a fortune.



Non-polar BG cost a fortune? Not sure how to interprete this. The BG are generally much cheaper than any decent film for the same capacitance. And you actually prefered BG to Mundorf SIO?!

Never used PETP capacitors mostly because polyethylene terephthalate is some type of polyester. Otoh i've used other russian caps (FT3, K40-Y9, MBGB) and although certainly good value for the money they are ridiculously overhyped. Great if you're on budget or building for someone else though :)
 
Hi analog Sa

the m caps I have are labelled as 'supreme silver', i dont think that is the silver/oil version but i am not sure??

The BG non polars cost a small fortune compared to the PETP's

I too have tried many of the military caps the teflons are not bad at all, overly smooth but still very good in my opinion.. The rest are not very good including the PIO's I see used regularly in diy project pictures.

Also i mentioned in another thread some time ago last year about starter motor caps used in washing machines 50uf for high voltage 400v application from Ducati energia.I have used these in many valve amp applications again i noted a quality akin to black gates but for a few uk pounds!!! compared to £100 for the black gates.
 
I, too, have used the Motor-start caps particularly for speaker Xovers and p/s bipass - the NOS Rifa ones are better than the Ducati, if you can find them.
I have changed up from these (and Wima MKP-10s) to Clarity Caps, and then up to the present arrangement of AmpOhm PP plus red Jensens.
I didn't like the sound of the Blackgates either, in my setup and the dark green POIs that come with the Aikido kits retain a certain "choked off" characteristic that many people have found attractive.
Hopefully, these humble Petps will be a success in my system - they are quite cheap and with the combined freight, it turned out to be reasonable (from Ukraine to Oz, that is!)
 
Do yourself a big favour: change your signal capacitors with these PETP, they are simply awesome!! They cost like a couple cigarettes and are twice better than many other expensive and world famous capacitors! Bright, analitic and... I'm not able to translate in english what I feel with these capacitors!

Mounted on my Aikido yersteday and... byebye Audio Note, RTI and oil paper capacitors! :D
 

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Piero7 I agree they can be slightly bright sounding in some set-ups. However, I believe they are essentially neutral sounding with an occasional accentuation of the top end over the midrange. Detailed....totally agree probably as much info as you would ever want. If by analytical you mean detailed and very transparent sounding (hence the accentuated top end), I agree, but they are at the same time as musical sounding as the rest of the chain allows them to be, and will allow a fullrange of tonal colours to come to fruition.

Not perfect but brilliant at the price

Using Kiwames with their warmer more organic sound compliments the PETP's well.
 
Analog SA

On the contrary, IMHO the Kiwames are not coloured at all, they add natural tonality that is so lacking in so many components that throttle out this important aspect of sound reproduction. Furthermore,IMHO Kiwames only add subtle changes to the sound so they can never act in a way that would impede the overall quality/characteristic of a particular component match set-up. Other components play far too big a role for that e.g CAPS.

I have Kiwames in many of my set ups including the Pass lab amps and GAinclone, and yet I still strive for more inner tonal shadings and colours to bring even more emotional connection with the music than i get. This is especially so with the gainclone,which can still at times make you believe the two voices belong to the same person because of its slight inability to tonally flesh out (COLOUR) the bones that give us our individual voice characteristics. The Kiwames at least try to add a little bit more onto the bones, if still not enough due to the other inherent characteristics of the chip. So 'more coloured than', I really really do not think so.


We all have our own psychoacoustics perceptions of what is right and wrong,and our own experiences with different circuit set-ups, so it is very difficult to establish complete confirmation of a lot of the differences we perceive via mail chat alone. Perhaps one day soon we could do audio demonstrations of the differences that we hear via threads as back up to our comments.
 
PS Please remember I did not say the PETP's are perfect as are none of the caps that exist. So you do still need tweaking and careful matching of components to get the very best out of them........as has always been the case since day one of our wonderful hobby.

But they are cheap and IMHO very very good for what they are.
 
Audiojoy


Of course our systems, perceptions and tastes differ. I simply avoid using parts with a strong flavour unless it is one i find very appealing :)

The Kiwames kinda worked for me at the time i had Lowther speakers. I haven't been able to tolerate them since but can well imagine they may be nice in some systems. The fleshing out you seem to crave will be easier achieved by tubes imo.

Btw, are you aware that Kiwame seem to be rebadged KOA Speer SPR2 and SPR5 which can be had for a fraction of the price from Mouser?
 

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SY

What has distortion got to do with what in my mind is perceived as realistic tonal colours to the sounds of voices and instruments????.........which is what the Kiwames IMO contribute towards. Perhaps I am not using the terms coloured and natural tonality correctly and it has become misleading, as in fact both could be interpreted as being the same , or the former is used to describe a sound that is more akin to unnatural/artificial.

Let me remind you that tonal/timbrel qualities is what helps one distinguish between different instruments, even between the sounds that emanate from two different aged woods used to make violins.

However, lets be careful here, I did make one assumption, and perhaps that was arrogant of me, i assumed the person who feels the Kiwames are coloured may not have fully appreciated the tonal qualities to which this resistor adds, since it is otherwise IMO quite neutral. So coloured might mean overly warm sounding in their book but accurate tonally in mine. However,having missed one of their mails above, I see that the idea of using tubes is in my line of thinking.

Once again trying to interpret what we all mean by our own psychoacoustic findings and terminologies can cause confusion and discrepancies in our findings.

This thread is regarding a potentially cheap alternative to the more exotic caps out there and i feel that this topic is now no longer part of this thread and perhaps it is best moved onto another thread???
 
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