Recapping?

[A33]

Is it all capacitors or just electolytic capacitors that need to be changed?

Are the symtoms for this being required that signal strugles to get through untill the gain is cranked then it jumps back into life?

Thanks in advance

 

[Rob Flinn]

Usually just electrolytics.

 

[mcs]

Unless the equipment is old (60s and earlier), and contains paper caps...

Best regards,

Mikkel C. Simonsen

 

[A33]

Thanks

 

[PRR]

> signal strugles to get through untill the gain is cranked then it jumps back into life?

That's dirty contacts. Could be jack or pot or switch. Clean them. Or solder-joint. Re-solder. Could possibly be a capacitor or resistor coming apart inside, but I rate that as unlikely.

 

[A33]

PRR
When the gain is then lowered it carries on working after it has "blown through"

I will check all contacts first
I will definatly ow you a :sam: :guinness: if it is the contacts

Cheers

 

[Steve Jones]

Old tanatalum capacitors are even more important to change, as they are prone to failure, and this often means going short circuit.

 

[A33]

The desk is an amek bc2 built early 80s
I will check chem tmw but do you know if it is likly to use tanatalum capacitors ?

Cheers

 

[PRR]

> When the gain is then lowered it carries on working after it has "blown through"

Yes, for a few minute or hours, and then it gets crappy and you have to "blow it out" again. It is dirt, oil, tarnish on a contact somewhere. A few volts of signal will burn-through, but it always comes back.

> I will check all contacts first

Do that, buy me the beer, and drink it for me.

It may not be that easy. I had a pretty steady job keeping an ARP 2500 working, because the thousands of contacts in the modules and the patch-array gave more and more trouble as they aged. Sometimes the real problem was hard to find.

 

[tony dB]

for what its worth...

I used to bypass bad (insert)contacts by inserting a patchcable, when i had no time to clean or replace them. Works 9 out of 10 times. Could be a life and timesaver and keep your sessions going. You could run out of patchleads though :roll: , i did :?

Tony

 

[A33]

Thanks
While we are here
What are the symptoms of needing recapping?

 

[Samuel Groner]

What are the symptoms of needing recapping?

Caps show increased DC leakage after some years, which causes pots and switches to be noisy while they're adjusted. You may need to clean/replace the pot as well...

Samuel

 

[tony dB]

is potnoise created by capleaking?
i mean, can it sometimes be cured by recapping, supposing the leaky caps are the reason? of course i know when the pots go bad they need cleaning/replacement.

 

[mcs]

[quote author="tony dB"]is potnoise created by capleaking?[/quote]
No, but the noise get's a lot worse when there's DC on the pot, and the DC may be caused by bad caps. Some equipment is also designed with DC on the pots, but that's not a very good idea... :wink:

Best regards,

Mikkel C. Simonsen

 

[tony dB]

thank you Mikkel :guinness: