On a related note, I wonder whether early digital gear like Omni V ages
so well. Specifically, wondering about the electrolytic capacitors.
Case in point: Picked up an Omni V and the potential was there but I
found it to be a rather hissy and spitty set. NOT pleasurable to listen
to. Too much high frequency garbage. Made my ears hurt.
Contrary to the "If it ain't broke" law, I decided to replace a few
strategic caps on the logic board with super low ESR motherboard caps
like Rubycon MCZ and Sanyo Oscon. Wow, spurious noise level went way down.
Emboldened by this result, I recapped the entire IF/AF board with
similar quality caps. WOW WOW WOW. The V is now super quiet and real
well behaved. The difference is NIGHT and DAY.
Two questions:
1) Were really good electrolytic decoupling caps for digital available
in 1989?
2) Are the yellow IC caps Ten Tec used even on the same planet
quality-wise as 2007 low ESR, HF rated caps.
I think not. I figure Ten Tec used good quality, but not exceptional,
1989 commercial grade parts....and these are getting rather long in the
tooth to boot.
A rig like the Omni V is digital and needs good caps and the ones in the
radio were probably not the greatest then and certainly aren't now. My
theory is that the marginal decoupling capacitors are part of the blame
for some of the noisy rigs out there.
Reminds me a lot of recapping old boatanchor radios, which I did a lot
of. Yanking out some funky wax caps and putting in Orange Drop 715Ps
really brought these old radios to life.
Time files...maybe we should start thinking about some of the 80s rigs
in the same light. My experience is that putting new, fresh, & really
fancy capacitors in the Omni V vastly improved the radio, and I only hit
a few of the high spots with the replacements. Will probably do the
whole radio over time.
I can now say that if an Omni V is at all noisy, it is not working right.
When I was messing with vintage tube radios, I struggled with the idea
of keeping them original, but for radios I wanted to use, I usually
went ahead and recapped because the performance gains were so high.
I am following the same logic here with, so far, very positive results.
Joe N5KAT
_______________________________________________
TenTec mailing list
TenTec@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/tentec
|