[sdiy] Gibson G101

[Roy J. Tellason]

On Monday 02 February 2009 07:08:45 pm John Henson wrote:
> I've just had delivery for repair one of these.
> It had just been shipped in from the States allegedly after a complete
> overhaul, but it's casing is damaged, loads of screws are missing and it
> doesn't work.
> Mind you, the cardboard shipping carton that it was in was perfectly ok.
> My question is, to what extent should I replace the electrolytic caps in
> it, there are lots of them.
> My own instincts are that all PSU caps should be replaced as they get the
> hardest time, followed by the main decoupling caps on each PCB, but the
> grey area is the interstage, biasing and decoupling around the small
> components. In my experience, they tend to be fine no matter what age they
> are, and my only nemeses are Tantalums. You can get faulty caps in any age
> of equipment, and they can be a b***ch to isolate, but you know something
> is wrong. This is a rare and classic instrument, so I want to do no harm to
> borrow the medical analogy, and ripping out 25 or so pcb's, all hardwired
> together, would be risky.
> Any thoughts?

Yeah.  Don't take that "replace caps" thing all that seriously.

You have a unit that's damaged,  physically.  The case is damaged.  There are 
screws missing.  Why are you worried about replacing caps at all?

I'd be looking for cracked boards,  broken traces,  and similar stuff.

This "let's change out all the caps" thing is really getting out of hand!


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