Capacitors in Cary PH302 phono amp

Well I substituted the Mundorf silver/oil for the PPMFX caps - Wow, really nice improvement!

The Mundorf's, with only 10-15 hours of play, are more transparent from top to bottom and have great extension and 'air' while offering more refinement. The Cary sounds gorgeous and seems to have gained more 'speed' and neutrality. Voices sound stellar. Best of all it sounds even more musically engaging.

PH302 with Mundorf S/O

FYI Reb, I never received a reply to my (email) order for the RTX caps. Perhaps I should have chosen a supplier with online sales(?). Anyway I'm more than happy with the Mundorf caps and I don't think I'd want to play with bypassing the PPMFX now.

Tobes, well done, Just to emphasize Rebs comment on bypassing, I would not recommend bypassing the Mundorf as they are built as 2 capacitors in one body with interleaved windings to minimize inductance. Bypassing would probably negate the design.

Tobes - I just saw your photos - I would suggest you push the caps as far away as possible from the tubes to minimize heat transfer.

Dover, there is more of a gap than appears in the photo, about 4-5mm. I also stood the caps off the PCB - mainly because there is a resistor under their footprint.
Those 6SL7 tubes run really cool, hardly giving off any heat. The whole unit only uses 15W according to Cary (most of the heat seems to come from the 5AR4 rectifier tube). I doubt it gets much above ambient room temps inside the case.

The caps appear to be mounted too close to the 6SL7 tubes as Dover has noted. However, the glass envelope of the 6SL7 is where most of the heat is. The base just houses the pin-out, so your mounting position is probably fine.

FYI- An old trick when replacing passive components that take up room is to mount from the underside of the circuit board. Sometimes taller standoffs are needed to raise the board a sufficient height to fit the part. This would allow you to keep the leads short. ( and mount away from the tubes.