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Question About Capacitor Upgrade in Tube Amp

Hi,

I am preparing to do a coupling capacitor upgrade on a recently purchased tube integrated amp. The two 0.22uF on the preamp tubes are fairly straight forward. But I noticed another similar model 0.33uF cap on the large filter capacitor for the B+ supply that is installed across the hot lead to ground.

Does this cap on the B+ just block high frequency noise from the power supply or does it have any effect on the amp tone? Is there any reason to "upgrade" this cap?

I know it may be hard to tell exactly what is going on without a schematic.

Also any recommendations on a good cap to use in the upgrade of the coupling caps? I was looking at Mundorf SilverGoldOil for the quality at not too crazy a price. The amp already sounds good but lacks a little clarity that I think a coupling cap swap will help with. It is SET 300B amp.

Thank you!

 

calieng
calieng OP
144 posts
 

@charles1dad  I am glad that you see his point. I do not. He makes smug and arrogant assumptions about people he doesn’t even know. 

They are just words on a computer screen. Don't get mad at some LCD pixels.

Unless you are on Twitter and someone tweets a nasty message at you! That would be different. Thems fighting words! I'm a gonna start a Twitter war!

😀

perkri
897 posts
 

Another quick thought, from personal experience. 
 

If you are doing the work yourself, one part out, one part in. Take pictures of every section you are working on before you start and after you finish. Speaking from experience here. Didn’t do that on my first recap project.  Nothing worse than being called away from the work, coming back and having a “oh crap, where does that go again…”

 

Please forgive the note if it’s already common practice, or if you are already comfortable with pulling every and then replacing everything.

charles1dad's avatar
charles1dad
10,238 posts
 

@calieng 

I don’t see the need to excuse rude and obnoxious behavior. I appreciate that we view this differently and that’s fine.

Charles

tomic601's avatar
tomic601
12,869 posts
 

whatever you do….run new parts in before passing judgement….

calieng OP
144 posts
 

whatever you do….run new parts in before passing judgement….

This is a very good point. I have been running the Kt-150 based Muzishare X10 for a few days now. Maybe still only 20-30 hours on it since delivery. But the soundstage is really opening up. Much more height and depth. Even though the amp did sound really good straight out of the box.

But for the Willsenton R300 I can see the coupling caps are of a cheaper kind so no problem swapping them without running the amp in more. Yes I will certainly run in the new caps for a while and report back on any improvement. I was able to source a set of the 3 needed Mundorf Supreme silver gold oil 1000VDC caps for only $100 total. But I am also going to order some of the other brands the folks here recommend to try them out and compare.

Thanks.

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