Phoenix Gold Phorum

Hi guys,

I was wondering what you all normally update on the MS series amps to get them ready for daily usage?

I figure the regular power caps of course to prevent the leaking... Anything other than that? Burr-Brown, something?

Thanks!

Input caps is the most important. I change the rail caps too while I am in there, because it is such a pain in the ass to get the board out anyways. Even though they rarely leak they can lose their capacitance over awhile.

the normal cap change is where all your reliability is going to come from, that and making sure you feed the amp enough current for your application. underpowering these amps is what prematurely shorten's the life of the cap,s from there its's just a downward spiral. you could go burr brown but you may lose some db for any clarity you gain depending on the efficiency of the opamp. and you also need to match the opamp to the one that's in your amp as the signal curcuitry is different in some rev models.

I was recently going through a parts express catalog and noticed thier audio capacitor section. Curious if anyone has used these and what there is to gain with swapping these in? Hope you don't mind me adding my question to yours pillow, your post made me think about it and I thought it wasn't really worth a whole new post. I have wondered if these caps are less likely to leak, or will sound better somehow?

ttocs wrote:I was recently going through a parts express catalog and noticed thier audio capacitor section. Curious if anyone has used these and what there is to gain with swapping these in? Hope you don't mind me adding my question to yours pillow, your post made me think about it and I thought it wasn't really worth a whole new post. I have wondered if these caps are less likely to leak, or will sound better somehow?

the audio cap's on there are side mount and really not made for the power side of thing's so i dont think i would try them in these high current amp's inless you like expensive fire crackers.

Great info!

Ttocs, please add anything you can think of!

So really, the big deal is the normal input caps and optional rail caps...

So far I have found that 75% of the people doing the rail caps damage their amp doing so. Unless you are good with soldering, I suggest against it. If the top of the circuit board is not connected to the bottom after you install the new caps, when you power the amp on you exceed the voltage capacity of many parts and they fail instantly. It then takes a lot of effort to track down the problem parts and perform the repairs.

I concur with not touching the rail caps unless you are experienced with it or ready to pay somebody to fix it after you rip out the pad. I hate snap in caps. Eric had to fix mine

I,m doing a few ms amps right now but I,m going to replace ALL caps on the amps as they are all 20 years old and have likely dried up by now and if not a fire hazard they will likely affect sound quality and the little ones are so easy to change anyways while your there and only cost pennies a piece (these are my personal amps though)

The Golden One wrote:

ttocs wrote:I was recently going through a parts express catalog and noticed thier audio capacitor section. Curious if anyone has used these and what there is to gain with swapping these in? Hope you don't mind me adding my question to yours pillow, your post made me think about it and I thought it wasn't really worth a whole new post. I have wondered if these caps are less likely to leak, or will sound better somehow?

the audio cap's on there are side mount and really not made for the power side of thing's so i dont think i would try them in these high current amp's inless you like expensive fire crackers.

I figured that they were made more to use as passive x-overs but wasn't sure if anyone had tried them in amps? I know high-end amps will use better pieces and wasn't sure if this was one of those examples er what.

i think some older high end tube amps use that type of capacitor in them im not sure if its on the power side or output section but i do know ive seen them in them. i know it would be cool to be able to use them in one of our amps but the current demands may be too much for them at time's i would think.

As stated, audio caps are for crossovers, not amplifiers. Putting them in an amplifier is useless.