[sdiy] Octave Cat modulation weirdness

[Roman Sowa]

Yeah! Finally someone said it... out loud...

I only recap when the customer explicitly tels me to do it. Then I 
select the best caps money can buy and still cannot be sure I'm helping.

And here's why. Compare the size of the same capacitance/voltage model 
from 20(30) years ago and today. Usually now it's even 5 times smaller. 
Really no margin for any heat faults, leaking/drying electrolyte, 
breaking oxide layer on obviously thinner aluminium foil etc. Yes, the 
old one may live probably only another 20 years from now, but a brand 
new tiny peanut may have life span shorter than that.

Another time I was told to replace, first measured ESR of original old 
big caps, and new high quality caps of even higher capacitance, and 
guess which ones were better...

Roman

W dniu 2015-09-30 o 22:25, Gordonjcp pisze:
>
> Outside of cheap crappy switched-mode power supplies, electrolytic capacitors mostly don't fail.  Disc ceramics do, and tantalum bead capacitors fail but you'd know about it from the bang and terrible smell.
>
> In nearly 30 years, I've replaced maybe about five or six electrolytics that weren't in a switched-mode PSU.
>
> What I have done is recover the aftermath of people "re-capping" things, to the point that when someone brings me a piece of gear that they say has been "re-capped" I just tell them to take it somewhere else, like the municipal tip.
>
> Go over it carefully and check your soldering, really carefully.  Clean off every bit of flux.
>
> Once you've done that, dig out the circuit diagram and try and work out where the signals are going.  Don't just blindly rip out and replace components and hope that this will fix it - more damage is done by the "HERP DERP NO WORKY MUST REPLACE CAPACITATOROSZZZ" brigade.
>