[sdiy] Tantalum alternatives for re-capping?

[cheater cheater]

Factory TH components have the leads welded rather than soldered,
though, which makes it easier to deal with if you want to have very
short leads and are very bad at soldering quickly.

On Mon, Jan 5, 2026 at 12:52 AM Mike Bryant <mbryant at futurehorizons.com> wrote:
>
> "You can turn any SMD part into through-hole by using two pieces of solid wire and some heat shrink."
>
> Which if you take a lot of thru-hole passive components apart nowadays you'll find that is exactly what they are, only they use resin rather than heat-shrink.
>
> ________________________________
> From: Synth-diy <synth-diy-bounces at synth-diy.org> on behalf of cheater cheater via Synth-diy <synth-diy at synth-diy.org>
> Sent: 04 January 2026 23:28
> To: Colin Hinz <music-lists at primus.ca>
> Cc: SYNTH DIY <synth-diy at synth-diy.org>
> Subject: Re: [sdiy] Tantalum alternatives for re-capping?
>
> You can turn any SMD part into through-hole by using two pieces of
> solid wire and some heat shrink.
>
> Personally, for simplicity, I suggest using a modern, high quality,
> through-hole electrolytic. They'll have better behavior both for audio
> and for rails than tantalum caps while remaining a similar size.
>
> For DC blocking caps I suggest MKT capacitors.
>
> On Fri, Jan 2, 2026 at 8:46 PM Colin Hinz via Synth-diy
> <synth-diy at synth-diy.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hello all,
> >
> > Slightly off-topic, but I am re-capping an old (circa 1977) MXR Digital
> > Delay and am wondering about the numerous small tantalum capacitors that
> > are in this unit. Should I leave them be? Replace them with new solid
> > tantalum parts? Replace them with some other technology?
> >
> > Unfortunately the replacements need to be through-hole parts, which
> > rules out some of the whizz-bang technologies touted as tantalum
> > replacements, such as niobium oxide.
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> > - Colin
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