[Electronic M]

If you do a decent number of transformerless sets stocking 160V lytics will save you money. I stock the paper caps too (I do enough work to justify that). I tend to buy my caps in bulk usually 2-3 times a year (something like a $100-400 order each time). I try to keep a minimum 25 each of the less common values .001, .0022, .0033, .022, .033, .22, and .47. And I try to keep a stock of 100+ of the high need values .0047, .01, .047, .1.

Doing a lot of TV work there are values like .0056, .0068, .0082 and 10X and 100X those values that I've started to stock 10+ of...When I need a higher than normal voltage I tend to order 3X what the set needs to build a small stock, and there are some other oddball values like .0015 .0018 etc. that I'm thinking of stocking too.

If I'm going to pay for shipping from an online parts house it makes more sense for that ~$7 shipping on $200 worth of caps 2-3 times a year than it does on $20 worth of caps 2-3 times a month...Also when you buy in bulk the volume discounts make the price per cap lower. I'm saving money by buying 6 months of stock in one go...Heck I often look at the more cap hungry projects I plan to start in the foreseeable future and add the parts they need in on top of my restock, so any new acquisitions are not fighting with my existing queue for parts.


Also with regards to instant on/standby don't change the circuit as it is original. Whether to use it depends on your use cases...On SW receivers and TVs with instant on or heaters only standby if I need to be away for 5-30 min (and don't feel comfortable with it fully on), probably want it to start working fast on my return and can enable such a standby mode easily then I use it. If I know it is going to sit for hours I turn it completely off. If I had a TV that averages over 8 hours runtime every day and gets turned on and off a lot with a lot of 'crap (insert show) started 2 minutes ago' moments you can bet I'd put it into instant-on mode and keep it there...If you're already running it in a way that wears the tubes fast instant on is not going to make much difference in life (heck it might extend tube life if you are turning it off and on a LOT every day). Something that sits unused most of the waking day, or days to weeks on end is just a waste to have in instant-on mode though.