Chinese capacitors - names please
 

can you guys give the names of the various chinese electrolytics and film caps or what the film caps may look like

thanks
mike

It might be easier to list the ones that aren't Chinese made?

There are many, many brandnames (including counterfeit versions of premium brands like Nippon Chemi-Con and Rubycon). The "worst of the worst" in my experience is a brand called "CapXon".

Quite simple - go to alibaba.com and search for capacitor. Alibaba is the Chinese marketplace that so many of your junk dealers buy their Chinese stuff from.

Of note, the Shenzen region is where 90% of the Chinese clone/counterfeit stuff originates from. I went to a US Customs / FTC brief on counterfeit Chinese goods in 2011 and they showed why things are made there - reliable electricity, cheap labor, and rail lines leading to the ports. No quality control, dirt floors in places making food items, and the electronics are culled for prime/seconds and scrap. Prime stuff goes to OEMs, seconds goes to the gray market/alibaba, and scrap goes to the kids that strip it for reuse of the various metals.

jb Capacitors is one cap company that spams me with a lot of offers, mostly for their film caps, all about .02c/each in 10,000 quantity. Crapola - the samples all were nice, but the other stuff wasn't even close. They offer audiophile stuff, and the greenies with their markings, but the lead time suggests someone else (??? who knows) makes them. ETR capacitors is where Justradios gets their supply of caps - same .02c each, and (in my one experience) poor quality. Others here like them, so YMMV.

I'm an Orange Drop/CDE DME/DMF cap aficionado. I use to buy the Orange drops from Mouser exclusively, but now that CDE has taken over the orange drop line, I get them from a variety of places. As for electrolytics, I stick to the high-temp Panasonics and the occasional NIC, Illinois Capacitor, and Nichicon. Panasonics are now carried with depth at Mouser and DigiKey, making whoever has them cheaper my go-to distributor. Buy more than 1 qty -the price drops sharply, and so far, they are all fresh caps.

Cheers,

Do they still make Sprague caps? Also, does anyone still market multi section electrolytics?

Barker Microfarads in Hillsville (VIRGINIA!!!) makes electrolytics on the old Sprague Atom equipment. I'm not sure if they provide Vishay (sprague is only a name, not a manufacturer anymore) with caps or not.

There are a few boutique manufacturers making FP-style electrolytics in 450V-600V values, but most are available only from audiophile suppliers. AES has some.

Sprague was busted up years ago, with SBE maintaining the manufacturing, and Vishay buying the sprague name. SBE retained the orange drop trademark, and made them under their name and Sprague/Vishay. Recently, SBE sold the orange drop line to CDE, who now markets and makes them exclusively. My last three batches of 225P and 715P's all had a China country-of-origin, so the made in USA orange drops are no more. Strangely, SBE still holds the trademark.

Also of note, Virginia also has a ceramic disc manufacturer in Hampton (Maida) making disc caps and more. You've seen them - MDC is the brand.

Cheers,

So if you were to use those yellow caps which brand and where would you buy them? if quality is an issue?

Good idea of you guys in the know to post about capacitors to keep away from !

Thank you......

Illinois capacitor makes some nice MPW/MWR mylars (polyester and polypropylene) and Mallory (CDE) has their 150 series of axials. Both are available at Allied and others. For HV caps, nothing beats ASC's high voltage axials - 3000V types are drying up at Allied. CDE's 940C series are available, but not in small values. Doug Harmon and I had a similar thread in 2010 about caps. He was also trying to avoid the Chinese stuff.

Mouser and Digi-Key carry the Panasonic ECQ series radial caps - again, great to have a second dealer. For years, it was all Digi-Key, and selection and price suffered. Along came Mouser, and the prices dropped, and the depth and range of values increased. I bought from Mouser when they first started carrying the Panasonics - great prices before the Tsunami that hit Japan. I guess their lead time increased, and the prices rose again. I got .047uf/400v Panasonic caps for less than 18 cents each, but those days are now gone. Oddly, some of the tighter tolerances were cheaper than the 20% types.

I go through more electrolytics than film, but have had positive experiences with all of the above.

Cheers,

I'm curious what type of problems folks have had with the Chinese yellow axial lead caps? I've used bunches of them from AES, Radio Daze, and Just Radios over the years. Never recall having an issue with any. :scratch2:

I've never gotten a bad one or had one fail in service.

I had a few that where shorted, they were all .1 no name yellows.

I found them while testing before I installed, which is my normal procedure.

stopped using yellow caps a while ago, just started buy larger quantity of dipped caps from mouser. I mostly buy 1000v to 2000v panasonic or nichicon IIRC. The size is closer to the originals and with that voltage I rarely have to worry about the odd high voltage I come across in sets.

I have had similar results as well. However on the site ARF several members claim to have had problems. One thing any modern film capacitor will not tolerate is being hit with a hot soldering iron. They go short circuit. Talking about the plastic part here.

On the topic of checking your caps before installing them, which I think makes a heck of a lot of sense, I wonder what any of you are checking them with. I know that the standard stand alone device is an ESR or LSR meter (can't recollect which is correct). But the versions that I have seen are battery operated and can't test the capacitor under a real world working voltage.

Then there are capacitance functions on just about any junky digital multimeter these days. Same thing; that 9V battery isn't able to do any real world loading. On lager value caps a good old Simpson analog meter at least used to be a half decent way of checking them (back when techs knew how to use a real meter) with the resistance function, but even that meter is powered by I think a few C cells. Now the VTVM (vacuum tube volt meter) versions obviously had to plug into the wall, but I really don't know what the difference is in what EMF is applied in a resistance test; probably not much. They only plug into a wall outlet to power the tubes.

I think that whatever device that can be obtained that would properly check a cap would be a very valuable tool for anyone doing what we are doing, or any other bench work for that matter.

The ohms range test voltage on VTVMs was typically provided by a 1.5V "D" cell battery, not derived from the line voltage.

What is the opinion of RicheyCaps out of Nashville,Tenn
Ya'll have any trouble out of those brand caps

You are correct about the VTVM , and in fact , there is only one handy way I know of to test higher voltage capacitors at close to their actual working voltages . This type of cap checker is capable of supplying up to 450 volts for the "dielectric breakdown" (leakage) function of test . These testers were made by Heathkit , Sprague , and RCA among others , and almost all of them use the eye tube as their method of indication .

No modern day , 9V battery supplied meter , will come close to the "real world" results produced by one of these . Sure , they can tell you value and internal resistance , but only the real world voltage test will reveal whether or not the cap will hold up at the intended operating voltage ....

PS , sorry for the crappy cell phone pictures , it's all I got to work with . If a picture is worth 1000 words , well maybe a somewhat blurry one is still worth a good 500 or so :D

I just got a pretty big order from www.capacitorworld.net

Sure can't beat the prices. The manufacturers were a mix of parts, many of the filters were Nichicon. Used them in a couple sets already, they seemed fine. The only weird one was the 10 uF@ 450V, they were a lot smaller than others I've seen, but all the rest looked pretty much identical to Mouser fare.

I used to order everything from Mark Oppat, but I gave up on him. My orders were getting lost and not shipped.

I've noticed that he did that too he's got too many rental houses
I told I'd come and run the Cap business for him while he keep the rentals
Going!, but that fell on deaf ears I guess he lost interest in his radio supply

Exactly right; I don't know how I let that fact slip by me since I have the actual "C" cell sitting right in front of me. Interestingly, this Simpson was given to me to fix up, and when I pulled the cell out I could see that it was rather dated. It is a Union Carbide Eveready "Nine Lives" with 30 cents each marked on the side. I couldn't believe it when I checked the cell and it was still producing EMF after all these years! Usually they have leaked and corroded everything long ago, but not this one. Pretty neat!

Anyway, so we are still dealing with the fact that everyday capacitance test devices these days are using a very minimal voltage in performing the test. I am pretty certain that there are vintage testers that test under load. I'm not sure how easily one might be obtained or how reliable one might be. I sort of have a rule that I like to repair and use vintage equipment, but I don't want to have to repair or restore my test equipment, so if I can I like to try to find reasonably newer stuff that would not require restoration. Given, much of the old stuff like Simpson V.O.M.s (solid state) and Hickok tube testers are pretty much bullet proof. On the flip though, I don't really want to rely on a really old O-scope unless someone has given it the once over that knows what they are doing.

Sorry, I didn't see Initforfun's Heathkit picture. THAT is the device to have if it is electronically sound. After all, it is full of capacitors its self, but it would be worth it I think to obtain one and get it up to speed. I am just wondering if they even make anything today that would be comparable.

I would absolutely LOVE to have that Heathkit unit!! Well kept vintage test equipment is about as neat as the radios and TVs we work on!

:thmbsp: Hi Tubejunke ,

If at all possible to find one reasonably priced , you would gain a great test instrument by obtaining one of these . The one I showed is the C2 model which is in between the entry level CT1 and the top end model C3 . Any of these with the eye tube and a "leakage" function of testing are the ones you would want since they put a real 450 Volts DC on the cap under test . The really great thing about the C2 is that it only contained 5 capacitors and the recap of it cost less than doing a typical AA5 . It's a neat circuit in that it only uses two tubes , one is a rectifier and one is the eye tube itself . There are two 450 volt 8 MF electrolytics in a voltage doubler arraingement that take the rectified 220 VDC from the rectifier and turn it into the 450 V for the test .

Since it's such a handy instrument I use it to check all the caps coming out of , and going into , any tube equipment I work on just for kicks and grins . So far , I have found a few brand new caps that failed the test and lots of old used ones had leakage values deemed unacceptable .

:) Have a great day and Happy Restoring .

Gosh thanks man for leading me in the right direction and all of the specifics. This may sound ridiculous, but I have a Lambda C480-M regulated DC power supply unit that I have been trying to find some use for. It weighs as much as most vintage TV sets, so listing it in the classifieds didn't do too much good. Supposedly the military used these units and its almost crazy how tough the thing is built. There are 5 metal cased 6L6 tubes there along with several miniatures like 12AX7s and such. Really neat old piece given to me by my electronics professor who said he had it since he was a "kid" and now he is close to retiring.

Anyway, I wonder if I could use this to build more or less what you describe. My unit produces 400 Milli-amperes at 200 V.D.C. which is approximately where you are at before the doubler. Again, probably pretty ridiculous; especially if I were thinking this out from scratch, but the Lambda unit is already there without a use in the world other than as a back breaker.

Supposedly HAM radio people or home CB people might use stuff like this Lambda, so my efforts would probably be better spent finding related sites and unloading the thing and then seeking out a Heath-kit. That really seems like a must have item to me if they are out there for sale. This idea was just something that crossed my mind as by chance I have been tinkering with the Lambda lately. I bet it could be done though. Really, it is possible to duplicate just about anything electronic.

:thmbsp: Hey there Tubejunke ,

Yes Sir ! , I'll bet you could whip one of these up in an afternoon's tinkerings . I know it wouldn't be all slick and prepackaged like a commercially made product but the fun factor of breadboarding something like this would be great . The really neat thing here is that it is at it's essence a Bridge circuit and thus really isn't too component extensive . I will attempt to post the schematic of my C2 for you , so that if you do whip one up ya got a solid design to build from .

Have a Great Day and Happy Restoring :D

I've been buying caps from Just Radios and they may be Chinese, but they work great and seem to last for me.

With that said, as for things being junk from China, have you checked out any of the modern Chinese babes there? Believe me brothers I have and they are far far from being junk.

Hey, thanks a ton for the info, schematic and enthusiasm! Look, if you happen to see one of these Heathkit units out there for sale, please let me know. I am also looking for a good (NON DIGITAL) oscilloscope. Nothing fancy really, just modern enough to be reliable. Again thanks pal!!