Re-capping PM1000

I was looking over digital drummer's documentation on recapping his PM1000.  I was always under the impression that it was just electrolytics that went bad, but seems that he went for it and did 'em all.  Is there any point to this? 

I recapped a few several years ago..I think it is a good idea to replace them all. All caps dry out after 30+ years and the caps in the signal path I felt were a little cheap...I went with polystyrene for the small values, film caps for the input and good quality electros for the rest. I also replaced the transistors with good mpsa18's..that seemed to make the most difference. I am going to try a better input transformer on mine at some point...I used some of these tamura's in some other projects and when compared to a lundahl or cinemag they were kinda crappy..but that will have to wait as I have a few other DIY irons in the fire right now

Ray

good advice, thanks.  I was thinking of throwing a carnhill on the output. 

I too recently acquired a 32 channel pm1000 which I want to mod the heck out of.
I plan on replacing all electrolytic with ELNA SILMIC II caps and the others with WIMAs as per the DigitalDrummer's website.
FYI Laura over at TAW electronics has the ELNA's I am making a list of them with her for easy ordering on a per channel basis. She was missing 3 values from the list right now.

So you replaced the NPNs with MPSA18s  but not the PNPs  (2SA561) ? why ?
What is the specs of that input transformer as well?


Chuck

I was looking more closely at this schematic and figured: Why not get rid of some of the electrolytics for some better sounding film caps?

They use the electrolytics in the signal path a lot in this design for decoupling which really may not be necessary. If i replaced them with WImas or even some crazy high end Solen's, Audiocaps, Jensen's ,  the results might be very desirable.

C1      0.47uF/35V
C8        10uF/35V
C9        47uF/25V
C10      33uF/25V
C11      33uF/25V
C18    0.47uF/35V
C37      33uF/25V
C25    0.47uF/35V
C29    4.7uF/35V
C31    0.47uF/35V
C35      4.7uF/35V






Anyone have any experience doing this or some thoughts ??

I got nuffin, but it would be fun to try.

I replaced the pnp 's as well..Dan Kennedy told me any suitable substitute would work fine and, wonder of all wonders, he was right ..Nice when you have a guru to guide you...

Cheers,
RAy

Hey substitute,
What are you guys doing with the buss section and headphone section? I've got Pm1000 I want to use as a summing/mixing desk, I know the channels have a nice quality but, is the master section up to it?

I think everything under 10uF you could replace with a WIMA polyester cap and everything above with Panasonic FM or Nichicon HE series electrolytics. That would get pretty pricey for 32 channels. Bypass them all with WIMA polyprops, .01uF or .1uF. They will start sound pretty sweet. I haven't looked at the digitaldrummer website, but if you want to change to EQ points to be like a 1073 here you go:

From 1KHz to 700Hz by changing the caps from .15uf to .27uF film caps
From 2KHz to 1.6KHz by changing the caps from .068uf to .1uf film caps
From 4KHz to 3.2KHz by changing the caps from .033uf to .051uf film caps
From 10KHz to 12KHz by changin the caps from .047uf (C15) to .039uf film caps