Vintage Simmons Drums (UK) Users Group

--- In Simmons_Drums@yahoogroups.com, Jacquot.Patrice@... wrote:

> What about when the condensators are dead or progressively faulty ? 
> don't they involve other componants damages & breakdowns by not regulating anymore tensions ?

That's a bit of a myth.  If you run gear in seriously hot conditions more-or-less continuously you will eventually start to dry out the electrolytic capacitors.  This will make the supply voltage drop and go all ripply, and you'll hear that as a hum on the output.  Other than that, they just don't seem to fail, much.

Disc ceramic capacitors fail by going leaky - that is, the ceramic stops being an insulator and they slowly become resistors.  This happens quite a lot - in one particular kind of radio I work on, I often change three surface-mount ceramic capacitors because if they haven't failed yet, they will soon.  Once they start to go leaky the decline is rapid - before long they will become a dead short and cause all sorts of mayhem.

Tantalum bead capacitors which are used in computer equipment to decouple noise from power supplies fail by going dead short *instantly*.  You know when this happens because of the thick smoke and horrible smell.  In an emergency you can often just cut them off the board until you get a chance to replace them.  It might be noisier, but it won't break anything.

Gordon MM0YEQ