Nichicon Filter Caps

[skyboltone]

Anybody ever had problems with Nichicon Filter caps. The UVZ or UVR radial lead series?

Thanks in Advance
Dan

[lastwinj]

never, unless older. whats the date code? should be on the side or on top, 4 digit number.

jeremy

[skyboltone]

never, unless older. whats the date code? should be on the side or on top, 4 digit number.

jeremy

I'm thinking new from Mouser. I'm getting tired of $8 sprague atoms. It's also a size thing.......does size really matter?

[BobW]

Sky,

I like the Nichicons and they can handle any ripple current typical in an amp. The ESR (equivalent series resistance) is also lower than the Sprague Atoms. A lower the ESR number = lower impedance. I don't have the links but if you compare the ripple current ratings and the ESR ratings you will see the Nichicons have a higher current capability and lower ESR.

[David Root]

I haven't used a lot of Nichicons but they seem to hold up.

I have heard tales about the smaller black Spragues failing prematurely, and some others made for Sprague by BCI, which failed early in nuclear power plant equipment because of incorrect size can sealing rings allowing leakage.

[lastwinj]

Sky,
A lower the ESR number = lower impedance. I don't have the links but if you compare the ripple current ratings and the ESR ratings you will see the Nichicons have a higher current capability and lower ESR.

also equates to lower noise coming thru the ground.

germ

[PRR]

> Anybody ever had problems with Nichicon Filter caps. ... I'm getting tired of $8 sprague atoms.

Atoms were good for 1950. Cap technology and materials have got a LOT better.

The current Nichicon and other mass-market caps are better quality and performance than classic Atoms.

The current Atoms appear to be modern mass-market cap slugs in Atom-size cans. They honestly can't make them the Old Way. So you are paying $5 extra for "look and fit". Perhaps time to save dead old Atoms, pop the seal and empty the guts (wash-up after), and stick Nich or Psonic caps inside, packed with cotton or hemp twine so it don't rattle.

[David Root]

This is news to me. Sounds like you have actually cut open an Atom! If that be so, why indeed pay a feelgood premium?

OTOH, if you are building a greasy tweedy old harp amp, which I'm about to begin, should you then buy the cheapest Chinese caps you can find?Somehow I don't think so. I have never believed in shortchanging the power supply. I've used Black Gates in my last two amps, one of which is a sort of brown Vibrolux, and it in particular sounds excellent.

[PRR]

See Sprague Atom - secrets revealed!!

> buy the cheapest Chinese caps you can find?

Who said that?

There's generic and there's junk. Modern mass-produced generic caps are really very good. Junk is always junk.

Though, BTW, many of the "minor brand" gitar amps of the old days were built with junk. Some are quite fun to play with.

[David Root]

Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle, as they used to say! "The airgap that mojofies". Considering that Vishay also makes some real high quality cutting edge components, i.e. seems to be a serious player with a good reputation, perhaps these "Sprague Atoms" are being built by a private brander for Vishay?

I have about a dozen Atoms, but I think they are all three to four years old. When did this nefarious practice begin, anyone know?

[PRR]

> Vishay also makes some real high quality cutting edge components, ... perhaps these "Sprague Atoms" are being built by a private brander for Vishay?

Well, I'd bet a teaspoon of air that the cans and labels are still made on the original Sprague machinery in Vermont, maybe by the old-time workers. Despite the fact that Sprague has been absorbed into Vishay. There are some major US buyers who still cling to Sprague, and Sprague maintains several very high-quality lines of capacitors.

But the foil.... well, cap technology has improved a LOT since the 1950s when the Sprague Atom specs were carved in Vermont granite. The "leading edge" (for 1950) foil and electrolyte they used then has been "hopelessly obsolete" for over a decade. Foils are thinner, better etched, anodized better, electrolytes much purer than they dreamed in 1950.

They apparently did keep the old technology running after nominal "obsolescence". After all, Atoms did have a great track record 1950s-1970s. If some "new improved" process turned out to rot-out in a few years, it was good to have the tried and true Atom technology to fall back on.

But now "all" new caps are "better" than Atoms, at least in every objective measurement. Lower parasitics, longer life.

And Sprague has been telling us for years: Not Recommended For New Designs. They know they have better caps, smaller, cheaper.

And it would be frightfully expensive to keep fixing-up the 1950s machinery, taking up space in the factory, when for every mile of Atom-foil sold they can sell 10,000 miles of new-tech foil.

And maybe they don't even want the old Atom-formula electrolyte around the factory: it might get into the new caps and degrade their life.

But OTOH: people pay obscene prices for Atoms. Not enough to tilt Vishay's bottom-line, but it seems foolish to walk away from what is largely "free money".

So it seems that a few years back, Sprague/Vishay scrapped the old Atom-guts machinery. Over in a corner the Atom can-stamper and cardboard-wrapper runs on slow Tuesdays. The cans are filled with new-tech guts, which surely beat every spec on the 1950 Atom spec-sheet. Leakage is probably 1/10th of spec, life will probably turn out to be many times more than the original Atoms did, and still more than the 1970s Atoms gave us. They may even be tight-tolerance. They are just as good as the 1970s-1980s Illinois and Panasonics. I got a lot of those still in use.

The modern really BIG cap-buyers demand the "right" caps. Yes, there are some bottom-feeders who want "cheap junk". And some better-brand users have been careless: there was the motherboard-cap scandal a few years back, when 30-day junk-caps got stuffed on several million PC motherboards and failed early (and very erratically). But there's also welders and industrial power supplies where any weakness or flaw in a cap will be revealed quickly. Good-brand Snap-Caps are little marvels of energy storage.

> When did this nefarious practice begin, anyone know?

I don't know.

You could try a density measurement. Put it in water and measure the cubic volume. Put on a scale to get weight. A really-packed cap will be a little less dense than aluminum. A modern generic cap can be a reference, because they are usually fully-stuffed.

Ooops... I guess you don wanna put a cardboard Atom in water.

[RB]

Man this is like when I found out there was no Santa Claus. What a bummer. I was sure I could trust a good old merican manufactuer not to deceive me.

Any way

I thought there was something going on when I would glue the blue Atom cans down and still here a kind of sprong sound when I would tap on them. I wasnt imagining that after all.

I just now finished recaping a Vibrolux Reverb with Atoms. I tried to get the guy to let me use F&T's but He insisted on the Atoms because he couldnt get past the size an look of the F&T's.

I have been using F&T's in most of my builds for sometime now and have been very happy with them.

Randy

[jimipage]

My gut instinct has always been that Sprague's were overhyped. I bought some once and I never heard anything that made it more special than any other cap. I've had great luck with Illinois, F&T, Nichicon, and(my favorite right now) Samwha. I will say that I do like to use Atom's for cathode bypass, but it's not a reqirement. Just depends on if I have 'em and feel like using 'em.

[lastwinj]

I just now finished recaping a Vibrolux Reverb with Atoms. I tried to get the guy to let me use F&T's but He insisted on the Atoms because he couldnt get past the size an look of the F&T's.

Randy

i would have sold him F&T. sometimes, the customer is not always right.

germ

[PRR]

> My gut instinct has always been that Sprague's were overhyped.

Long ago when they were introduced, an Atom was more likely to work well for a long time than any other cap you could readily buy.

I think by the 1960s, this was not so true. Other companys' better lines of caps caught-up with Atom.

Through the 1960s, you could just as easily get "junk brand" caps from Sprague and everybody else. If you fixed TVs and gave a 30-day guaranty, the $1 general-replacement cap was a better choice than the $3 Atom. You wanted it to last 31 days, but if it failed in a year that was OK. Atoms were reserved for "important" work. Maybe an overstressed TV that ate general replacement caps in a week. Of for your own special audio projects.

Sprague ran full-page radio-TV-repair magazines ads touting their caps and featuring the Atom. The mystique lingered in our minds even after Sprague and those magazines withered. Sprauge limped through some lean years by focusing on old-style technology and the repair and military sectors. So there was always a demand for Atoms; not big but those customers didn't want anything but a "Genuine Atom" and would pay more than $3 to get it.

The 1956 Cadillac was a VERY good car. With different styling it lingered far into the 1970s. That 390 engine was a lush posh V-8. But Mercedes and BMW were making better engines by then. (Also the car world turned in 1973.) Cadillac stumbled a while, then made the Northstar engine and put it in some very good (but not 21-foot) cars. Some people might prefer the 390. But they needed the 390 engine's factory to make Northstars. Sprauge may have left the Atom's foil and electrolyte machinery running into the 1990s, but that's big space for a small-sale cap. And frankly most of us are more in love with the "looks" than the "guts". I do think Atoms "look right" in old-style audio, but I know I can't hear a difference. And the "looks", the can and cardboard, can be stamped-out on very compact tooling hidden in the back behind the big new foil-rolling machines, and run in spare moments between attending to the mass-market cap machines.

I'm sure the current Atom meets every "best-for-1953!" objective spec.... well, gosh, the spec-sheet doesn't HAVE any specs except size! That was the state of the art when Atom was new. You got suggested temperature and voltage limits, but no spec on life or leakage. The newer caps give exacting details for life at various temps and volts, and how to test leakage (leakage is so low now that it is hard to measure correctly).

Lead-Free Atoms. {sigh} What an oxymoron. That '56 Cadillac lived for Lead, and all good electronics were stuck together with Lead. Who knew Lead does whatever it does (I forget)?

Compare to Little-Lytic, which has been around almost as long as Atom (used a lot of these in the 1960s). Those specs look awful today, and present LittleLytics surely beat those numbers. That was state of the art in the early 1960s. And if tubes hadn't been dying, and if Sprague had made the LittleLytic brand in 450V size and promoted it as hard as they pushed Atoms, we might now be clamoring for good-old LittleLytics.

There are non-objective aspects to cap "sound". But Sprague never built for a specific sound: they built the best they could, then they built the same way as long as they could justify keeping the machines around, and then they slipped us better guts in exact-replacement cases (exact because that old stamper and dies are still hanging around).