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In the Forum: Off Air Audio
In the Thread: Rohde & Schwarz EU-6201 Tuner
Post Subject: What's the deal with Tantalum Caps?Posted by Romy the Cat on: 7/4/2008

I do some very interesting experiments with Rohde & Schwarz tuner. Dima and I have discovered a way to use the Schwarz without the wide bandwidth amplifier, driving the Multiplex Decoder from the Schwarz’s preamps. Basically we put two stages with all it caps cap out of services - a very nice intellectual improvement. Doing it I discover that Rohde & Schwarz is heavy on use right in signal pass he Tantalum Caps. They are 16V 10uF-220uf. I was looking at them and desired to replace them with non-polar Nichicon Muse - the tested good cap. Well, I would like to reports that it got substantially better but am not sure. The Muse need some time to open up but since I know them very well and can predict their sound I still am not convinced that muse will my cap of chose.

Thinking about it I was educated myself about the Tantalum Caps. It turned out that there are Tantalum Caps, that are not partially too exiting and there are WET Tantalum Caps. The Wet Tantalum Caps are very different animals. They expensive like hell but it is very possible that is they are probably used (they must be DC biased) then they do just fine:

http://www.itiomar.it/pubblica/Telecomunicaz/lezioni/3_anno/Cap-Ta-2.pdf

http://www.vishay.com/capacitors/tantalum/wet-tantalum/

Rohde & Schwarz used both dry and wet caps I replaced them all to wet. What attracts me in the sound of the wet caps is notable higher transient performance… and substantially less foggy bass.  Well, perhaps I need to let the   Nichicon Muse to settle down and then to see what happen. Anyhow, my initial prejudices that those Tantalum Spragues from 70’s should be replaced on spot might not be too reasonable. Let see what happen…

The Cat

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