CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Is it ok to replace regular aluminum electrolytic capacitor with a tantalum capacitor provided the capacitance and voltage rating is the same?

From all i can read i see these as being more stable, more reliable, handling higher temperatures, and the only downside is they cost more. I dont care about the cost aspect if they will be more reliable.

Is there a better one to use?

[Nashou66]

Yes it is, even better find an Oscon for the same values, but oscons are usually no more than 25vdc.

But in the Electrolytic types I like the Panny FC or FM series.

Nashou

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Thanks mate!! This gives me abit more to go with rather than just whatever they try to throw over the counter at me when i go to buy them.

Ill do abit of a search when ive got abit more time for Oscon capacitors

[virusc]

I remember hearing that tantalum swapouts in CRT projectors have exploded violently and Oscon's were what everyone was using for single path for best performance? Their were many threads on AVS on this subject late 90's and early 2000's modding ECP's and BG800's. Maybe it was KAL?

[cmjohnson]

Tants are very intolerant of overvoltage conditions. Never run them over their rated voltage.

But they are excellent in certain applications, partiularly in power supplies that are subjected to large swings in load current demands.

Chris Stephens put 8 tants into the HVPS to improve beam current response time. His other mods encompassed every board in the
Marquee chassis and represented in total about 7000 dollars in parts costs if he did every mod in his arsenal. His Reference Imaging
Marquees have a stellar reputation for image quality.

Low ESR caps really should be used in power supplies at least. When you stop and consider that every power supply IS in the video
picture chain, you want every circuit in that chain to be able to respond quickly and accurately to moment-by-moment changes in demand. Low ESR caps definitely help achieve this.


CJ

[virusc]

Have not heard Chris Stephens name in a while. What happened to him?

I watched as the engineer at HI-REZ worked on the DTS booth 9500 one year and saw the pile of caps that Chris sent over to be installed. The only difference I saw was a slight more stable raster on very high resolutions. This was a mint 9500 with all the other mods before the recap.

[Nashou66]

I actually had a short correspondence with him last year over on AVS. he still has his Marquee.

Chris those where Wet tantalums he used on the HVPS. I think they are about 50 bucks each.

On VNB,s he also went with 100uf Wet tants. But i hear wet tants do not do well in the Hot locations like the VNB and frequent replacement
is needed, that gets expensive.

I would just look for the low ESR caps like the Os Cons or the pnasonic FC or FM series. Nichicon also has a low ESR series cap but i thinkt he Pannys go lower.

Nashou

[cmjohnson]

Yeah, I know he was using wet slug tants. I have copies of some of his notes including board-by-board modification data.

I corresponded with him for a time back in 2005.

But he was doing his work in the pre-HD days. I honestly think that Mike's mods here and now in the HD era probably go beyond
what Chris was doing in terms of performance. It's not like Chris had ready access to full motion video content at 1920x1080 back in,
say, 2003. Well, maybe HE did, but HD was all but non-existent in the home theater market if it existed at all. While the ATSC standard
had been defined in 1995 and adopted by the FCC as the US standard in 1996, we know that HD was far from commonplace as little
as four or five years ago, or even three.


CJ

[dvh99]

50 dollars for 1 tantalum condensator????
nice hobby if your wallet permits.

[draganm]

[macgyver655]