[Boatanchors] GREAT deal on eBay!!!

[Alex Whitaker]

They may check good for now on the cap checker, but it has been my experience that they won't stay that way (basically what you stated).  I used to try to get by with replacing bypass caps that had B+ on them and coupling caps in the audio section.  That worked for a while, but, eventually, the radio would start to crap out a bit at a time as it was played.  
 
I think your idea for saving them and selling them to the low oxygen content speaker wire crowd is a great idea.  When I saw what Black Beauties were going for on Epay, I about spit out my pancreas.  I've still got a few brand new ones that I need to put on there. 
 
73,
 
Alex
AA9XY

--- On Fri, 12/18/09, Robert Nickels <ranickel at comcast.net> wrote:


From: Robert Nickels <ranickel at comcast.net>
Subject: Re: [Boatanchors] GREAT deal on eBay!!!
To: "Alex Whitaker" <ehscott at sbcglobal.net>
Cc: jfor at quik.com, boatanchors at mailman.qth.net
Date: Friday, December 18, 2009, 11:12 AM


Alex Whitaker wrote:
> It would be interesting to see that stats.  However, I will predict 99-100% bad.
>   
Maybe so Alex, but "badness" is kinda relative.  I've started replacing the black beauties and such just out of an abundance of caution (and a desire to not have to go back and re-fix something I've already "fixed"), but I run quite a few across my Sprague TO-6 and find that probably 70% check "good enough", i.e. they're in the ballpark for capacitance and have leakage of less than 2ma or so (my rule of thumb) at rated voltage.  But based on my anecdotal data, they *all* leak, and it's just a question of whether the process will continue to the point where it adversely affects circuit performance or causes component failure.  Obviously a leaky paper cap  used for, say, audio coupling will have a much greater impact on performance than one used as a cathode bypass.

Still, I'm tossing the cut-outs into a container in hopes of some day making myself rich selling them to some audiophoole on eBay ;-)

73, Bob W9RAN