New, used various brands mil spec PIO from the local Army/Navy surplus store and out of old tube electronics, but good luck finding any today, much less still usable. Getting ready to rebuild mine and plan to use motor run caps.
GM
OK, we have a thread going on least expensive. Who wants to talk about the best sounding caps they have actually used on ALTEC crossovers, without cost concerns??
Actual experience ONLY please, not theoretical or something you read on line, without doing / hearing it !! .
Simply, what have you heard, and like to use??
If you employ multiple film bypass caps, to retain the highs, lets hear about that also.
Thanks, lets see who is doing what !! Should be interesting to see and hear about in 2017.
Low Ohms.....Jeff
New, used various brands mil spec PIO from the local Army/Navy surplus store and out of old tube electronics, but good luck finding any today, much less still usable. Getting ready to rebuild mine and plan to use motor run caps.
GM
Loud is Beautiful if it's Clean! As always though, the usual disclaimers apply to this post's contents.
GM you can say that again! We have a surplus store in St. Paul MN, they have hundreds of PIO caps, thousands of regular caps, some the size of pop cans, hundreds of thousands of other electrical parts, transformers the size of cantaloupes, power cords as big as your thumb, over a hundred types of on/off switches, tube amps from the 30's sometimes. I could go on and on, when I go there, I actually get dizzy there is so much stuff. Last time I was there they had a large Altec tar filled horn for 300, I would have bought it but it had dents in it. If anyone needs any rare parts PM me your # and the next time I go, I can call you and see if I can find what you are looking for.
I'm jealous! I wish we had a surplus store like that in town!Originally Posted by juniper
I've been using paper in oil caps since the late 90s. Attached is a picture of my current crossover, caps were acquired from a few radio shows/hamfests I attended last summer.
JE
Yes, sadly most are long gone.
Your neighbors called. They like your music.
I thought I would post a photo of what just one of my A7s' ( four ) crossover cap banks ( an all-film cap bank ) to show all what it looks like now-a-days. Notice, I mass-load my crossover with a single 16 pound concrete paving block, and triple golf-ball isolate it - from the flimsy 825 enclosure.
By ear, I have added 290 pounds of concrete patio blocks a top each A7 enclosure.
I am doing Crossover " C's " much differently, it seems, than many users here.
The attached photo's multiple film cap bank will repeat itself FOUR times, for a pair of A7-800 VOTTs, in my apartment's living room. ( its a DIY 12 dB / octave crossover at 800 Hz, for 16 Ohm drivers ) My VOTTS run 515Bs and 802Ds. .
The Red-Orange colored cap at the top is a Dynami Cap E , 4.0 uF value, with lead outs I wire-modified and selected by ear. That particular cap, IMHO, is likely the best sounding 4 uF cap in all of audio.
I think Richard Marsh designed it, built by Rel Cap. It s certainly the best 4.0 I have ever heard on "my" ALTEC speaker. It is " to die for " for me, purely on a audio-performance basis.. Percy sells them, at $65.95 each, and the cap is worth three times the cost to me, after hearing it on my " getting optimized " VOTTs. I would never listen ... without it.
The white one, below the DynamiCap 4.0E, is just a Russian Teflon I have nuded, I think its a P, or is it a K-72 and it acts as a high-frequency bypass, 0.033 uF value at 1600 VDC. The green one, is a Russian K75-10, which is a 0.68 uF bypass, at 500 VDC rating, and it is a middle-range bypass cap. A K75-10 is really not perfect, sadly its a bit dark sounding, but that 0.68 uF value does DYNAMICS in the midrange, nicely. Very fast on energy discharge, current delivery. Rumored, on line, to be used to ignite H-Bombs .
Well, it will be interesting to see who else is experimenting with quality film caps, and see what they are up to. I will be rewiring my entire 802D tweeter section, ( crossover to driver diaphragm ), and go from 14 AWG to 16 AWG, in the second half of 2017 . It never ends. Lotsa fun.
I will also likely TRY this year to add some 0.01 / 600 VDC modern films to each cap bank, for ultra-high-frequency bypassing.
Low Ohms.....Jeff Medwin
Last edited by Todd W. White; February 28th, 2017 at 07:05 PM.
Are those 90 or 100 compression golf balls?
Enjoying Altec Speakers since 1972
PIO as main caps far superior to the Solen and Sidereal caps used in the past. Using Teflon bypass caps across the PIO really elevates the sound quality.
Last edited by SD-50; February 27th, 2017 at 04:12 PM.
I think its funny that the winner of the best "value" caps thread are oil caps.
And the winner, by popular vote, of the "best" caps for Altec are (drum roll) oil caps!
Last edited by Elitopus1; February 27th, 2017 at 07:57 PM.
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