Another Baldwin organ amp breathes new life...

[chops]

Nice work chops. One question, are those foru original green caps the coupling caps? If so you might want to upgrade them also. Orange drops are cheap and sound good.

Thanks! Yes, those are the original coupling caps, but they measure and sound good. I have thought about upgrading to new Orange Drops, the 617's I believe they are? I might one day, but I'm just trying to sort out the rest of the amp first.

[mike stehr]

I would try the Russian military K40Y coupling capacitors if you ever decide to do it...I dunno if 716P orange drops would sound much better than the Sangamos or whatever those are.

[chops]

I would try the Russian military K40Y coupling capacitors if you ever decide to do it...I dunno if 716P orange drops would sound much better than the Sangamos or whatever those are.

I've never heard of the K40Y's before. I might have to check them out, although these original Sangamo's are sounding darn fine still in this amp and you wouldn't believe what people are willing to pay me for these caps if I ever remove them from the amp! At any rate, I won't waste my time or money on snake oil boutique "audiophile" caps. I've heard a lot of people say they "upgraded" to those boutique capsin old amps like this plus Dynaco's, Mac's, Fisher's, etc, etc and the outcome was not good. Sticking with the simple basic caps sounded much better.

[mike stehr]

I've never heard of the K40Y's before. I might have to check them out, although these original Sangamo's are sounding darn fine still in this amp and you wouldn't believe what people are willing to pay me for these caps if I ever remove them from the amp! At any rate, I won't waste my time or money on snake oil boutique "audiophile" caps. I've heard a lot of people say they "upgraded" to those boutique capsin old amps like this plus Dynaco's, Mac's, Fisher's, etc, etc and the outcome was not good. Sticking with the simple basic caps sounded much better.

I use the K40Y's quite a bit. They are excellent coupling caps for the money...there are the green Russian coupling caps as well.

If the Sangamos don't leak DC to the grids of the output tubes, and sound fine, then you are good to go. They look like the are/were NOS, and I'm sure the builder (Will Vincent?) had good reason to use the Sangamo coupling caps.

I'll agree with the boutique audiophile coupling cap hype thing to a point. In more complex tube circuits, like a push-pull integrated amp, there is more length of a signal path going through many resistors and coupling caps.

Using boutique salon coupling capacitors in these kind of circuits seem a little more pointless to me, except maybe for coupling to the output tubes. I just rebuilt a Scott LK-48B integrated amp, and used 716P orange drops everywhere except for the coupling caps to the finals, which are K40Y.

Most boutique caps are made of different materials, which aren't necessarily what materials the particular vintage tube integrated amplifier was designed around.

Nonetheless, things will sound different and that's a subjective thing up to the user...

In a single-ended tube amplifier with a short signal path, the benefits of a boutique coupling caps become more obvious. I've never strayed much beyond the K40Y because I don't have the cash or enough reason to try the boutique range of caps.

I do have a 45 SET amplifier breadboard circuit that started off with Jensen aluminum PIO coupling caps, but then swapped over to Russian military teflon coupling caps. The Jensen caps made things sound a bit on the dull side. The teflon caps opened things up, making a more modern hi-fi sound, yet retaining the euphonic 45 sound. It worked for me...

The Jensen aluminum PIO caps do work well in a single-ended 6BQ5 pentode circuit, where a 6BQ5 can have a bit of "bite" in the midrange.