What makes this particularly easy to do is the fact that the entire metal chassis of the amp is the ground, much the way your car is wired. Capacitors store electrons, and if you place yourself between those electrons and a ground, they will shock you, and it will hurt. This is probably the point where I should talk about electrical safety when working with large capacitors. We have Ben Franklin to thank for this incorrect convention, and in some European schematics, particularly older ones, the current orientation is shown correctly. The direction of current travel shown in most electrical schematics is actually the opposite of the direction of charge carrying particles. The astute reader will notice that as the electrons are actually travelling towards the positive voltage. On the left, a concentration of atoms missing electrons (holes). On the right, a concentration of electrons. The lack of electrons on the positive plate induces a greater number of electrons on the negative plate, giving it a net negative charge. When you apply a positive voltage to one side of the non-conducting plate, it pulls electrons off of that plate, much like lower air pressure in a room that you’ve just taken the air pressure out of (electrons are negatively charged, and so they are attracted to a positive voltage). What makes a material conduct is that it has a large number of possible electron configurations, so that at any time in a metal there are a cloud of loose electrons wandering from atom to atom. The non-conducting material is referred to as the dialectric. All capacitors have two layers of conducting material, with a layer of non-conducting material between. Here’s what you need to know to pick the best capacitor for the job, without spending a fortune on Super Fancy Audio Capacitors.įirst, a quick review of what capacitors are and how they work: You can think of a capacitor as a bucket o’ electrons. Even after drilling down to the specified capacitance and voltage, you have dozens of candidates, differentiated by such esoteric terms as Tan Delta, Q Value, ESR, etc, etc, etc. When you go to Mouser or Digikey, however, you are presented with tens of thousands of choices. So, you’ve decided to repair/upgrade your vintage audio equipment by replacing the capacitors.
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