I’m still trying to decide which polypropylene caps to use to replace the six 10uF electrolytic caps with. I was looking through my collection of old polys and came up with the following caps. They’re not 10uF caps but I thought I’d ask if any of these caps are of any use to me in this application?
Six each .33uF 425V Wonder Caps
Three each Sprague Orange Drops .33uF 400V
Three each Rel-Cap .047uF 600V
Six each .33uF 425V Wonder Caps
Three each Sprague Orange Drops .33uF 400V
Three each Rel-Cap .047uF 600V
Esteemed moderator, lifetime audio hobbyist, reviewer, and all-around nice guy Stuart Yaniger wrote the seminal work on what you need to know about coupling caps -
SYclotron Audio | Why are people obsessed with coupling caps?
SYclotron Audio | Why are people obsessed with coupling caps?
I have completed my build but have been unable to get the correct voltages out of test point 7 and 8
T7 and T8 are around 20 volts and I can adjust T8 to 10 volts and T7 to 19 volts
I notices the JFET from Q1 and Q2 are FKH23 J113, FKH34 J113 FKH35 J113 and FKH33 J113 and wonder if they are installed correctly.
I am pretty sure I kept the bags separated. See attached image for installation. any help would be appreciated
Check that you have not accidentally swapped a 332K resistor with a 33.2K resistor.
I’m still trying to decide which polypropylene caps to use to replace the six 10uF electrolytic caps with. I was looking through my collection of old polys and came up with the following caps. They’re not 10uF caps but I thought I’d ask if any of these caps are of any use to me in this application?
Six each .33uF 425V Wonder Caps
Three each Sprague Orange Drops .33uF 400V
Three each Rel-Cap .047uF 600V
Don't you think that that changing the values several orders of magnitude will affect the should much more than dielectric type? 🙂
I have a board that takes big poly caps, but assembled it with Silmic's and it sounds pretty good so don't even want to bother chasing them.
However, if you think that you can hear the difference between caps (in a blind or double blind test), go ahead and I would suggest you to use expensive mundorf supreme (black not white M-caps: Mundorf Capacitor 10.0uF 600Vdc MCap® Supreme).
I’m still trying to decide which polypropylene caps to use to replace the six 10uF electrolytic caps with. I was looking through my collection of old polys and came up with the following caps. They’re not 10uF caps but I thought I’d ask if any of these caps are of any use to me in this application?
Six each .33uF 425V Wonder Caps
Three each Sprague Orange Drops .33uF 400V
Three each Rel-Cap .047uF 600V
As others have said, these values are nowhere near right. That's why we said earlier that using PP caps would be expensive.
I have almost completed an 'upmarket' build of the Whammy---it works but now needs to be finished properly---and wanted to use really good input caps. I chose the Jantzen Superior Z-Caps, 10uF, 2% tolerance, at US$34 each. I'll have more to say about them in that thread, when I've been able to do more listening, but (i) it took some creativity to get them to fit in there, and (ii) you get what you pay for. (Indeed, the Silmic IIs I used for the 220uF caps have caused some issues with the op-amp. More on that, also, in the other thread.)
Hmm. Potential for stray coupling by using a larger audio cap. Stray cap coupling while listening to Stray Cats?
A nicer version of the B1K wiring diagram has been added to the build guide, also attached here.
Attachments
Hmm. Potential for stray coupling by using a larger audio cap. Stray cap coupling while listening to Stray Cats?
Random idea: Can you shield those by, say, wrapping them in foil?
Franksr,
Why don't you use the search function and look for my posts re caps?
All what you are asking is in there... The minimum values you need to go for, the PPP ones I purchased and why, the way I fitted them on the board, the calculation of the 3rd cap value for YOUR needs and the sonic qualities TO MY POV.
It were all detailled in long posts so I didn't have to do it again and people could refer to should they wish so... That should hopefully save you a lot of hassle and money rather than blindguessing values etc.
Enjoy music
Claude
Why don't you use the search function and look for my posts re caps?
All what you are asking is in there... The minimum values you need to go for, the PPP ones I purchased and why, the way I fitted them on the board, the calculation of the 3rd cap value for YOUR needs and the sonic qualities TO MY POV.
It were all detailled in long posts so I didn't have to do it again and people could refer to should they wish so... That should hopefully save you a lot of hassle and money rather than blindguessing values etc.
Enjoy music
Claude
OK, again for those joining the party recently...
THE B1 KORG SOUNDS GREAT AS IT IS.
And you can already adjust a lot of things to play with and get the sound you like...
BECAUSE it sounds so great, I thought of tuning it further to "MY" taste to keep it in my main system as reference, something "stupid me" wouldn't have even considered by principle a while ago. That was before I listen to this little jem. So I went for various tunes and tried alternative parts, that's a DIY forum after all...
So... Regarding caps, you CAN use 0.22uF for the first cap in the signal path, 1uF for the second and ,in my case, I went for 3.3uF for the last one to enable « in case of » an easy sub 10k entry impedance power amp to follow. If your amp's input impedance is say 50k and you are confident it won't go below ever, you could go as low as 0,66uF so say 1uF could do the trick IN THAT CASE. Would then fit on the board and be still resonably priced.
You can use the make, technology, flavour you like. I went for DC 940C polypropylene caps and loved what I heared.
That's all IMHO and of course people may or not be sensitive to caps. As of "odd" me, it turns out I am not "that"sensitive to absolute phase, but very sensitive to negative H2 (love it negative, but not too much H2). Regarding caps tuning, it depends also IMHO on units: the current Class D amp I tweak for a friend (not my cup of tea, for him) doesn't repond that much to caps swaps, the B1K much more so IMHO.
This is DIY: important is YOU like it, there is no right or wrong other than going for wrong values. Each opinion on that is very respectable and sometimes hotly debated, but I found all the people here VERY friendly and helpful for whatever tweak or issue, regardless their own opinion on the given subject.
I hope this helps
Claude
THE B1 KORG SOUNDS GREAT AS IT IS.
And you can already adjust a lot of things to play with and get the sound you like...
BECAUSE it sounds so great, I thought of tuning it further to "MY" taste to keep it in my main system as reference, something "stupid me" wouldn't have even considered by principle a while ago. That was before I listen to this little jem. So I went for various tunes and tried alternative parts, that's a DIY forum after all...
So... Regarding caps, you CAN use 0.22uF for the first cap in the signal path, 1uF for the second and ,in my case, I went for 3.3uF for the last one to enable « in case of » an easy sub 10k entry impedance power amp to follow. If your amp's input impedance is say 50k and you are confident it won't go below ever, you could go as low as 0,66uF so say 1uF could do the trick IN THAT CASE. Would then fit on the board and be still resonably priced.
You can use the make, technology, flavour you like. I went for DC 940C polypropylene caps and loved what I heared.
That's all IMHO and of course people may or not be sensitive to caps. As of "odd" me, it turns out I am not "that"sensitive to absolute phase, but very sensitive to negative H2 (love it negative, but not too much H2). Regarding caps tuning, it depends also IMHO on units: the current Class D amp I tweak for a friend (not my cup of tea, for him) doesn't repond that much to caps swaps, the B1K much more so IMHO.
This is DIY: important is YOU like it, there is no right or wrong other than going for wrong values. Each opinion on that is very respectable and sometimes hotly debated, but I found all the people here VERY friendly and helpful for whatever tweak or issue, regardless their own opinion on the given subject.
I hope this helps
Claude
Oh, these are of course minimum values, you can exceed them of course, but I wouldn't advise going lower (unless you accept to cut the lower bass response).
..... all the people here VERY friendly and helpful for whatever tweak or issue.....
....... bunch of Sissies

GLOL
Startin' with ZM, I should have added...

Note: had to go for the Jocker, the Clown was already trademarked 🙂
Have lots of fun guys, this is the most important thing in our lifes, after all
Claude
Startin' with ZM, I should have added...

Note: had to go for the Jocker, the Clown was already trademarked 🙂
Have lots of fun guys, this is the most important thing in our lifes, after all
Claude
nope ZM, I'm just pretending to be Sissie, all the time

(trademarked:
Papa, OPLDF, Dodo, Sissies, M2 Best Amp of All Time, etc.)


(trademarked:





Hi
Could someone please direct me to post number on how to adjust 10k potentiometer pots. It doesn't seem to be in the guides.
Thanks in advance 🙂
Could someone please direct me to post number on how to adjust 10k potentiometer pots. It doesn't seem to be in the guides.
Thanks in advance 🙂
Don't you think that that changing the values several orders of magnitude will affect the should much more than dielectric type? 🙂
I have a board that takes big poly caps, but assembled it with Silmic's and it sounds pretty good so don't even want to bother chasing them.
However, if you think that you can hear the difference between caps (in a blind or double blind test), go ahead and I would suggest you to use expensive mundorf supreme (black not white M-caps: Mundorf Capacitor 10.0uF 600Vdc MCap® Supreme).
I was actually thinking some of these caps might be suitable for use in a bypass capacity, maybe in a specific position on the board. Are the Silmics you used current stock or NOS? According to Nelson Pass, the construction of the caps has changed. Thanks for your reply and advice.
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Thanks
That was the issue. Thank you SO Much
Check that you have not accidentally swapped a 332K resistor with a 33.2K resistor.
That was the issue. Thank you SO Much
Hi
Could someone please direct me to post number on how to adjust 10k potentiometer pots. It doesn't seem to be in the guides.
Thanks in advance 🙂
Test between T7/T8 and ground connection if I remember correctly.
Another successful build reporting in.
First my thanks to NP and all those that put this kit together for yet another electronics newbie.
All test values are nominal and for two days I did not have a bit of microphonic problem only very nice sound but with a couple of things I will get to.
Then microphonics started, out of nowhere in near absolute silence. No music playing no noise in the room or elsewhere. I had blue tac under the board from the get go but have now tamed the problem with a blue tac brick on the face of the tube.
As far as tube bias I think I prefer about 10.5 volts at tp7 and 8 but that is subject to change.
I do perceive that the soundstage image is slightly left of centre or that there is a hole to the right and slightly behind the right speaker. This is most prominent as I lower the bias voltage??? At 10.5 volts it is least noticeable, the speaker waltz has commenced.
After reading cccochran 5436-38 and the reply by zen mod 5437-42 I did some poking around and found some things that maybe someone can explain to me?
RCA ground to hot R 8.3 ohms L 8.0 ohms both fixed
PCB R fully counterclockwise 0-12.8k-minus 8.0 ohms fully clockwise
PCB L fully counterclockwise 0-13k-0 fully clockwise.
Thanks also to the most experienced of this group for all the advice and help to us the least experienced, please keep it coming.
If you have a scope and FG (or even sound card with an appropriate program), you can measure the gain of the two channels to see if they match. In my case there was around 1 dB gain offset between the channels. Mr. Nelson Pass had also mentioned that there may be up to 1 dB offset (same thread). I don't know if 1 dB is audible (I haven't tried). The gain can be tuned by the bias (which also changes the harmonic profile). I found that going to a lower distortion bias allowed me to get a better matching of the gain, and the distortion also seemed to be more stable (my PS had a small drift over time, which also affects the distortion when the distortion setting was set too high). One of my channels was set to 9.9V, and the other at 10.2V. Distortion for both is around 1.2% at 1Vrms.
By the way, my POT tracks extremely well. I got exactly the same offset all the way from 0 to max.
I don't know how much manufacturing variation we have in the nutube. I found that only one of the channels is microphonic (very bad) but the other channel was rock solid.
Franksr,
Why don't you use the search function and look for my posts re caps?
All what you are asking is in there... The minimum values you need to go for, the PPP ones I purchased and why, the way I fitted them on the board, the calculation of the 3rd cap value for YOUR needs and the sonic qualities TO MY POV.
It were all detailled in long posts so I didn't have to do it again and people could refer to should they wish so... That should hopefully save you a lot of hassle and money rather than blindguessing values etc.
Enjoy music
Claude
Thanks, Claude. I’ve actually searched and read all your posts, twice. You apparently chose those values because you wanted to ensure the best match with specific power amps. I have no idea what the specification of power amps I might use are since I own several. So, I concluded, right or wrong, that it wouldn’t be a good idea to mimic those values. It seems to me that I’d be better off just using caps with the original value of 10uF. As for the caps I mentioned I have on hand, I was thinking they might be suitable as bypass caps, maybe in a specific location on the board.
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