[fsjonsey]

Originally Posted by Tubejunke

I have used some NOS cans that a local electroncs shop sells me at a good discount. I can never get them to admit that age is a factor with capacitors. So far they have been right but I have only tried a few. The reason they sell them to me cheap is only the fact that there is zero demand for them. They have tons of Sams folders they would like to get rid of along with a pile of 70's (I think) color CRT's. You would think they would gladly give me the stuff to avoid one day having to haul it all off to the dump but they only cut me a certain amount from their list price no matter what the item.

Anyhow the capacitor age question has long been debated. I think if you want to use a set as if it were a new set it would be good to replace everything with fresh parts. However I am often amazed at just how long capacitors will do their thing. Especially in radios. I have radios from the 30's and 40's with mostly or all original components except tubes. I also have 3 television sets that are 50 plus years old with mostly original caps and still going strong. I only use the TV sets for maybe 30 minutes at a time though.

Actually, the zenith in my sig is still on all of its original cans, and its 52 years old. The sealed metal cans seem to hold up better than the wax/cardboard electrolytics used in cheap series string TV's and AC/DC radios. I never trust those. All of the paper caps are long gone though. Those bargain green poly film caps JustRadios sells in bulk do their job quite nicely. Sometimes having to solder on longer leads or combine caps to get the corrent value is worth the extra effort to save money. Hooray for being a poor student! It's pretty sad when orange drops are out of your price range.