Capacitor decision on speedball upgrade.

[JamieMcC]

Here's the thing! I have started assembling the speedball upgrade and not being very forward thinking when I built the Crack in standard form I have soldered one of the 100uf 160v electrolytic capacitors rather snugly to its terminal strip which makes it tricky to bend back it looks like I might need to be removed and reattach with longer leads.

Two questions

1, Would it be ok to make and solder new legs to the 100uf 160v with some left over ground bus wire or should I use something else?

2, If I am going to need to remove the capacitor it makes sense to start thinking ahead now and consider upgrading both caps at the same time prior to stripping down and physically fitting the speedball in place.

What have Crack builders had good results with capacitor type wise, is there a common or prefered first choice what things should I look out for when researching options?

 

[mcandmar]

Removing the cap shouldn't be a problem if you have a solder sucker?    You could solder new legs onto the cap but thats not really ideal to be honest, i would only do that to repair a cap if a lead broke off.

 

[galyons]

There is limited space in the Crack.  Fly leads are likely unavoidable if you want better caps. The minimal downside of the extra solder joint is, generally, more than offset by the positive benefits of better caps. Doing fly leads now will, likely, make it easier to upgrade the output caps in the future.

I use Russian PIO, (MBGO) in mine.  Two parallel 30uf per channel. More than adequate low end for my vintage AKG K240 Sextetts, 600 ohm. 

Depending on the impedance of your cans you may be able to go much lower than 100uF.  Here is a post from Doc:

For those of you who have not seen it, grufti made a very nice chart showing the low frequency cutoff you can attain with different output cap values and different headphone impedance ratings. Depending upon the cans you choose 50 uF could be a reasonable value, and it should work just fine with HD800s, getting down to around -3dB@11Hz:





Cheers,
Geary

 

[JamieMcC]

Thanks I like the idea of putting fly leads in. Will look at the attachments a little later this evening when I have a bit more time.

 

[Paul Birkeland]

Once you remove the 3K resistors, there will be plenty of room on the other side of that terminal strip for the 100uF caps, so I would just flip them around.

-PB

 

[JamieMcC]

Paul thanks, sat with the speedball if front of me I just noticed I have used the wrong size wire for the jumper leads on the large pc board I used red and black from the Crack build rather than the smaller wires which came with the speedball kit. Is this likely to cause any problems later on? 

 

[Paul Birkeland]

Nah, that won't be a problem.

The wire we provide with the Speedball has insulation that won't melt (unless you have "special" talents), so it's a bit easier to use for retrofitting into a kit.

-PB

 

[Grainger49]

  .  .  .    Speedball has insulation that won't melt (unless you have "special" talents)    .  .  .  .   

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There are those of us with many "special" talents.

 

[JamieMcC]

Super, that me chuckle as well!