Replacing Capacitor Help?

Hi guys,
I have had my hifi setup all for five or six years now, and having just moved house and settled into a new job, I thought it about time to get it all serviced and sounding newish again (without spending too much money). Anyways, I am passable at soldering but don't really fancy doing it myself, so can anyone point me in the right direction of someone who could replace all of the caps in there with something a bit nicer? Cheers!


The Moog

 

In where?
Speakers, amp?

 

Oh yeah, sorry!
CD player, pre-amp, and power amps should cover it.

The Moog

 

The standard reccommendation is to get a local TV repair guy to do it.

5 or 6 years doesn't sound that old though, not sure if it would really be worth all the effort/expense, unless you were thinking of upgrading the caps in some way?

Might be helpful if you say where you live BTW, in case someone can suggest someone local to you.

 

Yeah, I thought about finding a TV repair guy, but I think I would prefer someone who had a good familiarity with hifi... Probably just for my own piece of mind more than anything else

My kit consists of all MF X-Series components (X-Ray, X-P100, 2 x X-AS100's, and a pair of X-A200's), and yeah, I would like to do a caps upgrade. I changed the caps on my X-Cans V2 and the difference was amazing, so I was hoping to achieve the same effect on the rest of the system without blowing loads of money on any replacement components!

Oh, and I live in Hitchin in Hertfordshire...


The Moog

 

What ever you do don't short a capacitor with a screw driver, when I was 12 I attempted to fix a camera flash. So I decided to short the capacitor to drain it, only being 12 I had little idea you are supposed to use a resistor to do this better still leave it to dry up natarely(sp)

Anyway I used the screw driver to short it and I never had such a shock in my life.

BANG! The room lit up, there was smoke and the band was so loud even mains dosn't sound as bad when that is shorted. Luckily I was using a well insultated screw driver so the only injury I had was a slight cut when the shock made me stab myself.

Could you not take it into an MF dealer to have this job done?

 

Heh heh, yeah, some of those capacitors in the X-A200's are pretty meaty!

I e-mailed one of the guys in the service department at Musical Fidelity and asked if they would do it, and they basically said no. They will service kit and replace the caps with the origonal ones, but not put non-standard spec ones in there (which was kinda the whole point of the excercise!) and not even tell me what the specs of the origonal ones are.


The Moog

 

give Collin @ cpt acoustics 01584 878221 a call. Hes your man for the job.

 

hmm, Mf caps are no secret, I had a few mf amps and they use Jamicons, and the specs are on the can.
my goodness, those big ones in the 200 are 10,000 ufarad at about 70 volts, so that's a few megatones DONT TOUCH
Electrolytics that is, dunno about the plastic ones.
I actually quite like Jamicons, they are really reliable, probably frowned on by Audiophiles, but in valve stuff they are great in little places,for me, the important ones for me are Cardas or Jupiters in the signal path, and oil caps in the psu.

 

Like I said, the reason I fancied changing them is that I did a caps change on my MF X-Cans V2 (Jamicons throughout also) to some not too expensive Rubycons (I don't think I could afford anything too esoteric like Black Gates!) and I was surprised at how much better it sounded, and if it improves the system by half as much as it did the Cans, I will be a happy little bunny

I generally like my setup, and don't really want to change the sound of it too much (or go out and buy new kit!), but the better caps just gave the sound that little bit more depth and bite...


The Moog

 

Cheers for the contact Class A,
I have dropped him an e-mail, so hopefully he'll get back to me when he has a free second

The Moog