To be honest I had huge problems myself at replacing those caps because nothing compared in size with at least the AWF ones...They were litterally 2...4 times bigger than the biggest similar caps i found on the market these days and no datasheet was available so I thought that maybe i should just leave them be as long as they work well. They look pretty alien to me,but I take pride in not changing things that work and I very rarely if not at all consider myself smarter or better than the designers of a reputable model of audio components in a well known company. I do trust that they knew what they were doing after many attempted failled mods I have done over the time.Maybe I'm lazy and too cheap, but lately, as long as i can't hear anything wrong in audio equipment I don't even consider measuring anything.Old rubycon's and sanyo are 2...3 times heavier than today's new capacitors and they measure better even if they stood for 20 years unused on a shelf.That is what i consider lost technology cause the best new capacitors I could get my hand on don't preserve more than 50% of their capacitance if you leave them for 10 years on a shelf and you're pretty happy with that.I saw that pattern even by comparing some nichicon muse bipolar caps from 1991 I found in a store with the ones i bought in 2017 .The new ones look and measure differently than what they measured when I bought them and the 1991 ones stayed on a shelf until 2011 when I bought them , then most of them spent another 8...10 years in a drawer in my home and I use them currently yet they measure as they were made yesterday. I don't have the time and financial resources to check out all the capacitors on the market either.New high quality capacitors gets pretty expensive too.
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Actually I did replaced last year a working 12v regulator based on bd135 with a 500mA 78M12CT motorola reg plus the additional filter caps in my Dual 701 as it supplied the ac187 germanium trz driving the direct drive motor so I wouldn't risk changing some rare germanium trz.In the mean time I found enough ac187 trz to fix about 20 Duals... but i'm using them along ac188 complementary types for building audio amplifiers as they actually sound pretty well.If I like germanium based amps maybe my views aren't that valuable, but I also coupled their output with nichicon muse caps so I try stealing some audiophile credit in my favour 🙂
The tough part for me was to realise hat having new parts on a shelf leads to many older parts on a shelf and this for such a long time that it makes more sense to design with recent technology and buy the then best possible parts accordingly. The hoarding and thinking old stuff is better is a male phenomenon occurring at many a DIY person. A few weeks ago I visited a guy to buy something. This guy had stacked various audio series in all of the house and walking in this house was difficult as it was chockfull. That is when a person does not realise that having complete audio series leads to many audio series catching dust. One uses only one set usually 🙂
When I worked for a Japanese brand I learned not to trust that they knew what they were doing. Where people work mistakes are made. I have seen class A tuners where the power transformer needed a heatsink as a modification and "decoupling capacitor free" designs just to mention a few. We did quite a few modifications in brand new equipment. It is the opposite view to check, see and know where improvements can be made or where cost savings were done. Denon DA500 was such a device.
Even though it hurts...the "it will work 20 years from now" is useless in this day and age. Older technology simply is obsolete one day. A USB stick replaced the Mini Disc.
When I worked for a Japanese brand I learned not to trust that they knew what they were doing. Where people work mistakes are made. I have seen class A tuners where the power transformer needed a heatsink as a modification and "decoupling capacitor free" designs just to mention a few. We did quite a few modifications in brand new equipment. It is the opposite view to check, see and know where improvements can be made or where cost savings were done. Denon DA500 was such a device.
Even though it hurts...the "it will work 20 years from now" is useless in this day and age. Older technology simply is obsolete one day. A USB stick replaced the Mini Disc.
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