Recap cost
- Thread starter Thrust
- Start date
ranjam
New member
Why? 
Aside from all the wonderful p*rn on the Internet, there's a lot of armchair gurus who insist 'recapping' an amp or whatever will be a panacea for bad tone from your gear. Assuming the tone is bad to begin with. And assuming the caps are bad. Figure the shop rate (anywhere from $50 to $75 an hour), and how many caps need to be changed. Then decide if the mixer is easy to disassemble, as this can add time and expen$e. It will all add up quick, so beware of Internet gurus. If the mixer works, doesn't hum or crackle, and seems to pass a clean signal, you might just leave well enough alone.
Aside from all the wonderful p*rn on the Internet, there's a lot of armchair gurus who insist 'recapping' an amp or whatever will be a panacea for bad tone from your gear. Assuming the tone is bad to begin with. And assuming the caps are bad. Figure the shop rate (anywhere from $50 to $75 an hour), and how many caps need to be changed. Then decide if the mixer is easy to disassemble, as this can add time and expen$e. It will all add up quick, so beware of Internet gurus. If the mixer works, doesn't hum or crackle, and seems to pass a clean signal, you might just leave well enough alone.
dgatwood
is out. Leave a message.
Mostly agreed.
There is one other situation in which I would consider a partial recap. If you're gigging with a board that has a bunch of old oil-and-paper caps that are of a variety known to have a short life expectancy, it might make sense to replace those to minimize the risk of them blowing when you don't have time to repair it.
For that matter, if you're gigging with the board, it might make sense to inspect the power supply capacitors to make sure none of them are swelling, and replace any that are (or even replace all the power supply caps just to be safe). The main power supply capacitors do the most work, so if any cap is going to fail, statistically speaking, it will probably be one of those.
Beyond that, though, yeah, replace parts when they fail. The amount of sonic difference between capacitors in a line level circuit is likely to be fairly small, and a recap is unlikely to make a huge difference. You'll get far more bang for your buck replacing noisy op amps or FETs with newer, pin-compatible, low-noise versions of the same parts. Unlike capacitors, silicon has come a long way over the past couple of decades or three.
There is one other situation in which I would consider a partial recap. If you're gigging with a board that has a bunch of old oil-and-paper caps that are of a variety known to have a short life expectancy, it might make sense to replace those to minimize the risk of them blowing when you don't have time to repair it.
For that matter, if you're gigging with the board, it might make sense to inspect the power supply capacitors to make sure none of them are swelling, and replace any that are (or even replace all the power supply caps just to be safe). The main power supply capacitors do the most work, so if any cap is going to fail, statistically speaking, it will probably be one of those.
Beyond that, though, yeah, replace parts when they fail. The amount of sonic difference between capacitors in a line level circuit is likely to be fairly small, and a recap is unlikely to make a huge difference. You'll get far more bang for your buck replacing noisy op amps or FETs with newer, pin-compatible, low-noise versions of the same parts. Unlike capacitors, silicon has come a long way over the past couple of decades or three.
ranjam
New member
Oh, the power supply is a definite possibility. Those caps get stressed constantly. But paper-in-oil is old. That mixer would probably be the size of a '52 Pontiac. Not many around these days, I'd imagine. The new stuff could have bad or even counterfeit capacitors; Capacitor plague - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, so it's not a bad idea to have them checked out when you have the mixer apart for routine servicing (cleaning pots and sliders, etc.) next time it's at the shop. But generally, my attitude has always been If it works, it works. Sometimes, small problems get worse. But generally, all I do is maintenance, and not try to redesign or improve something just for the sake of trying to redesign or improve something.
dgatwood
is out. Leave a message.
Yeah, I remember recapping some gear because of what I suspect were bogus electrolytic caps. Failed after a year or two. The recapped hardware was still working at last count, about a decade later. It's probably safe to say that any gear with those bad caps in it should have failed by now. 
My logic is a 20 plus year old mixer is due for a little maintenance. I love the mixers features. I cant afford anything new that has better features and its a little hissy under any and all conditions. Im also under the impression that even standard caps available today are superior to what was used twenty years ago. Im not really expecting night and day difference.
mshilarious
Banned
Hiss is usually mostly a function of active component noise and secondarily thermal noise from resistors. The latter may be a design problem; the former *might* be curable by swapping quieter parts in critical areas. Caps won't make much if any difference.