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Guys this is a topic that has had me stunned for a while now and I'm looking for the light at the end of the tunnel.
Everyone has there ways of looking at this issue, but, when it comes to push and shove there are many factors that
will determine the outcome and the one thing that I find that is a constant is the price.
Unfortunately we all were not born with that elusive silver spoon but I'll be damned if I'll let them have all the fun, so
there must be affordable options out there.
Teflon VCaps seem to be all the rage and everyone that has used them tested them are of the same opinion, "they are great",
I've used a fair few different caps in the past but not enough to have a good conclusion on what is better (my ears aren't what they use to be)
Some of the ones I've used are Mundorf MCap Supreme, Obbligato Gold Premium Caps, Jensen Aluminium Foil, Auricap XO, Mallory 150M, Vishay MKP1839HQ,
and let's not forget the Russian teflon FT-3 grenades.
Could you shed some light on this, let's say that the budget is for 1 X 0.22uF 630V+

$1 or less for coupling caps.

20

Russian, panasonic, CDE.

Panasonic ECW(F) fan myself

There is a "golden oldie" that almost no one talks about any more - Polystyrene Capacitors. Unfortunately they max out at about 0.01 mfd. @ 630 volts. You can use them to bypass a polypropylene film cap (I like "JFX Premium"). As far as "I" am concerned, that pair sounds as good as any $50 capacitor that employs some esoteric material, (like papyrus from the dead sea scrolls). The only shortcoming of a Polystyrene capacitor is, they can't stand the heat. Keep them cool, and I think you will like what you hear. The pair (polystyrene + polypropylene) will set you back about $4.50, or just use the JFX Premium alone, and it still sounds great for about $2.00 each.

J.

Hi,

jwhitmor wrote:Unfortunately they max out at about 0.01 mfd. @ 630 volts.

You can get Russian polystyrene caps bigger for cheap as long as they last. A mate sent me some 100n @ 630V with a 0.5% tolerance that costed him ~$2 ea.

Cheers!

A while back I accidently bought some Russian K73-2 mylar PETP in oil caps. I usually get the K42 but he had them for a good price. They are a lower voltage (400 vs 500) but same green color and size as the K42. I put all of them in a zip lock and never planned on using them. Some reviewers haven't liked them, but haven't seem to have actually tried them, they are just going off someone else's review. Others that have tried them liked them, along with the dry versions, K73-16, and K73-22. I saw Audio Note started using mylar instead of paper, because they were having too many failures with the paper in oil. Could most capacitor reviews be as worthless as Machina Dynamica's Teleportation Tweak?

DeathRex wrote:Could most capacitor reviews be as worthless as Machina Dynamica's Teleportation Tweak?

Yes

There's science: http://diyaudioprojects.com/mirror/memb ... /caps.html

And there's your own ears.

IMO, nothing else matters.

Cheers!

I do like foil caps over metalized , because tin and copper foil caps can have the leads soldered to foil and not just crimped which will corrode over time and increase the ESR

Plastic ones - polyprop - from RIFA could be a good choice.

Remember that non-plastic caps don't have the densely 'winded' cores, which may cause the foils to vibrate and result in tons of 3rd harmonic distortion . Plastic caps are heated up to make the plastic shrink and give a very compact core that don't behave like the PIOs for instance.
I've even seen handwound caps (Duelund), but that sounds like worst kind of snakeoil.