Best economy capacitors for tape head preamps?

musicmanbob

New Member
Jul 12, 2012
13
0
1
Atlanta, Georgia Area
HD-4  power supply.JPG Good evening all, some years ago, when there was a great deal of excitement for all who started collecting reel to reel tape decks there were a few folk who developed and produced tape head preamps. At that time I had a tech here in Georgia build a unit I could afford. During that very important time there was also much talk about the capacitors used as well as SS or Tubes were preferred. My question has to do with capacitors, in particular, improving the capacitors in my tape head unit. I finally got around to removing the bottom cover and note 2 fairly large capacitors (.33uF +/-10% 600v) Audience Auricaps. I understand that Audience makes a newer capacitor, the Auricap XO which is suppose to be a much better capacitor. I am supposing the high end units most of you have did not use these capacitors. I also recall that some of you felt strongly that the Mundorf was the correct upgrade path. I also recall some felt strongly about VCap, etc. Should I upgrade using the same capacitors (Older Auricaps) or the newer XO version? Many years ago, I did pretty good with a soldering iron, but don't know if this is a job, swapping out the older caps for the newer one's I can or should handle. Here is what the power supply of my tape head preamp looks like. Thanks for comments. As you can see, I could not figure out initially how to include both sections of my tape head preamp on the same post. Forgive me for posting the same text in 2 places.
bob :(
 
Last edited:

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
15,813
37
0
Seattle, WA
Well, the first thing I would do is remove the source of heat from them which in this case is the rectifier. I would gently bend it forward so that there is good distance between it and the caps. Alternatively you could bypass the PCB and solder the cap directly to its terminals at leaving it away from the rectifier and chassis if that also gets heated up due to tubes.

Other than that, I am old fashioned and not up to the latest bits on audiophile capacitors :). So I would rely on major Japanese brand caps to get reliability in that situation (Panasonic, Chemi-Con, Rubycon, Hitachi, Sanyo). And oh, buy them from a reputable distributor (e.g. Digikey, Mouser) as there are fakes out there with these markings.
 

musicmanbob

New Member
Jul 12, 2012
13
0
1
Atlanta, Georgia Area
Good evening Amirm, I sure to thank you for commenting. Since this is the power supply I really did not think this contributed a lot to the sound. However, I will take advantage of your suggestions. After all these years, I can still read some areas of a schematics, but hesitate to attempt to make too many changes unless they are very minor. Thanks again.

I sure look forward to everyone here have a very blessed and joyous Thanksgiving. :) :)
 

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