Black Gate caps

Gslone,
I don't know how many hours you have on your Blackgates, but they don't sound very good until they have at least 300 hours on them. They will get even better after the 300 hour mark.

Thanks Sherod. I had my preamp modified in '06. I never turn it off, and I play music a lot all the time. I'm basically happy with the results.

Where I could find a value match, I replaced all the caps in my Audio Note Dac kit with Black Gate caps, and the improvement in sonics was substantial.

Jj2468,

A friend has an Audionote kit DAC, with all the upgrades Audionote makes available, that sounds terrific. I have several other friends with Audionote DACs (DAC4 & 5) that are really good too.

Have you looked into upgrades using some of the premium Audionote capacitors? I know some of these components are many multiples of the cost of Black Gate capacitors, but, I've heard good things about them.

I've got modified tuners, preamps, phono stages, and power amps and, as a generalization, Black Gates almost always sound better, when used correctly, than the equivalent electrolytic capacitor. Of course I'm a little nuts -- look at my system. It has a power amp with 160,000 uF Black Gate cap supply (one of the signature Krells supposedly has them too but I've never seen one).

They are good as power supply caps and can be excellent in coupling and by-pass applications. They will fit where larger teflon film caps will not. Note that there are several variants of BGs --Standard,FKs, Ns etc. and these sound quite a bit different depending on how and where used.

Some people do not like their sound. Others don't care for a particular type. It is possible to use too many, but this is true if you use too much of anything. It's also possible that a circuit might end up sounding worse but that's usually a problem somewhere else.

It's not an accident that they're popular with many modifiers and diy's. They will be missed!