Sozo caps in Ceriatone Expression

[eazilyled]

After months of deliberation, I finally ordered a Ceriatone Expression kit.
I ordered the kit with Sozo signal caps instead of the orange drops as an upgrade from Nik, but without transformers (will be using Heyboer).

Has anyone used Sozo caps in an Express build? If so, do they sound acceptable as opposed to sourcing Mallory PVC caps.

[JamesHealey]

they'll sound different thats for sure, sozo have a long long break in time too so give them atleast 100hr of abuse before your decision is made.

Personally, I'm not a fan I much prefer Mallory 150 in Marshall clones, and I like the PS6 series Orange Drops in my wreck.

I've found Mallory 150 leak a lot, I ordered 12 caps and 4 leaked DC.. bad huh? so PS6 is my first choice for everything followed the MKT1813 by Vishay/ERO which is a great polyester cap and easy to find with good tone.

[doctord02]

I built my Express build using the Sozo's and like it fine - but cant say what sort of difference the proper PS series caps would have made... Generally my go-to caps are Mallory 150's, so these sound some where inbetween a 150 and a vintage mustard is I had to place it.

[eazilyled]

Thanks for the replies guys.

Gonna stick with the Sozos to see how they sound. May as well since I ordered them as an upgrade from Niks standard orange drop caps. At least that way I'll know how they sound even if I don't like them.

[paulster]

Give them a good 50-100 hours break in before you decide their fate.

I pull the power tubes, set the controls for a load of gain (but still at positions where the caps would have a signal across them, so the volume can't be on 10 or it'll bypass the bright cap, for example) and then feed in a guitar range sine sweep for a few days to break them in.

Sozos have the rare ability to be both woolly and ice-picky before they are broken in and then sound fantastic. Don't know how they'd sound in a Wreck build though.

[guitarsnguns04]

paulster could you elaborate on this process a little bit?

[paulster]

I've got a test track that's essentially a four-octave sine wave sweep that starts from a low E to what would be the 24th fret on the high E that I can feed this in the front of an amp on repeat to (crudely) simulate the range of frequencies it will be getting during normal playing. It won't include the harmonic overtones but then as soon as you introduce distortion within the amp you'll be generating the harmonics anyway.

Then I pull the power tubes out, basically dime the controls and leave it in play mode bothering no-one for a few days.

Rather than actually diming all the controls you need to look at the schematic and see what capacitors are connected where, to figure the optimal control positions. You want to get as much voltage across all the caps as possible (so you want the gain to be high), but you don't want certain caps being completely bypassed.

An example would be a tweed tone control, which has caps either side of the pot. In this case you want the pot to be at its 50% resistance value to maximise the voltage across both caps (assuming the volume is dimed), so that would be about 7.5-8 on the dial (since it's a log pot).

A similar thing would apply to a volume pot with a bright cap and, in the case of the Wrecks with two bright caps, you want to alternate the position of the bright switch periodically to give both a workout.

Oh, and I use a set of crappy startup tubes for doing this rather than waste a load of hours on decent glass.

[guitarsnguns04]

Thanks Paulster..Ill give this a try. I have a guiar with a sustainer on it and Ill strum all the strings open and the sustainer will keep the strings vibrating thus sending in a full range frequency into the amp. Sounds like its worth a try and will be anice way to break the caps in while not bothering my 9 month old. Thanks for the idea!

[Structo]

Hey Paul,

When you do that method without the power tubes, do you need to have the speaker(s) connected?

[paulster]

Nope. The only connection to the OT with the power tubes removed is the B+ connected to the centre-tap but it's open-circuit since the other ends of the primaries are connected to empty tube sockets.

Now if I could only find a similarly quiet way to break in speakers...!

[Structo]

That is what I figured but wanted to be 100% sure.

Yeah, I wish I had a basement with a closet for breaking in speakers.

How about some industrious person making a mechanical speaker breaker inner?

It would have a padded donut that would fit the speaker cone just inside of the surround and have a camshaft drive the donut so it pushed the cone in about 1/4 inch or so and cycle through that movement.
But it wouldn't be able to pull the cone towards the front.......hmmm.......hmmm......

Patent pending!

[KGW]

I have premium sozo coupling and cathode bypass caps in my marshall-1987 inspired amp. I have also tried orange drops and mallory 150s in that amp.

When I out in the sozos, the difference was huge - it was like all the gunk went away. As for the break-in time, I hooked a signal generator to the input and a dummy load to the output - worked fine.

I have been thinking about trying them in my express clone. Maybe some day I will.

[paulster]

I hooked a signal generator to the input and a dummy load to the output - worked fine.

That's got the advantage of giving your OT a good workout as well, at the expense of pounding your power tubes.

Could be worth using a crappy set of power tubes for though.

[mumford]

Is it necessary to feed it a signal during the break-in period? I don't have a signal generator, the best I could do is an ebow or a looper.

But my question still stands--can someone explain why it is necessary to give it a signal during burn in?

If so, does it matter what frequencies are used? Admittedly I am skeptical that it would make a difference, but I also know less than virtually everyone here.

[paulster]

If you don't use a signal they'll just sit at a static DC voltage. Put a signal in there and the voltage will be increased fairly significantly by the signal riding on top of this DC voltage. How much difference this will make I can't tell you, but on the basis there's already a massive difference between breaking them in and not breaking them in I'd stick a signal in the front (use the radio if need be).

Sozos need all the help they can get out of the box. And then they sound fantastic!