Improving the Coupling Capacitors for Better Tone Sounding

[CJ]

I walked into the office of Vacuum Tube Valley magazine one time in Sunnyvale CA, got to talk to Eric Barbour and Charles Kittleson for about an hour, they had the place packed with old HiFi gear, sound systems for drive in movies, you name it. They showed me a bank of about 5 oil filled PCB capacities that they had just used for an article. Big suckers, about 6 x 6 x 2 inches, didn't see any leaks, those guys were serious about audio.

But it is kind of like asbestos, takes long term exposure and large quantities to cause damage. Look at all the people going to school and work under PCB ballasts in the light fixtures back in the day.

Anyway the VTV article said "yes there us a danger but boy do they sound good!"

I don't know, I am thinking that knowing there were a string of cancer bombs sitting in my stereo might tend to dampen the listening experience,

I forget which issue , I will look it up,

 

[soapfoot]

Do we have definitive test data on which capacitor brands and technologies contained PCBs?

I’ve handled a few oil filled caps over the years and would be interested to know if research has been done in this area

 

[emrr]

I certainly have oil caps that say "no PCB's" on them. My impression is it's just older oil types.

Have never seen anyone address what's in the old stock Soviet oil types.