[Boatanchors] capacitors

[Richard Knoppow]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Glenn Little WB4UIV" <glennmaillist at bellsouth.net>
To: "Boat Anchors Mailing List" 
<boatanchors at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Sunday, February 12, 2012 10:15 PM
Subject: [Boatanchors] capacitors


>I recently got some capacitors at an estate sale.
> There are some Cornell Dubilier PM602 and some GE MAL 
> molded
> capacitor in the lot.
> Are these in the same class as the Sprague BBOD?
> They are both molded capacitors.
> The GE capacitors are black and the CD capacitors are 
> green.
> There were also some orange drops and brown dipped 
> capacitors in the lot.
>
> I plan to use the orange drops and the brown dipped 
> capacitors first.
> Should I keep the GE and CD capacitors or find an audio 
> phool??
>
> Thanks
> 73
> Glenn
> WB4UIV

    Early Black Beauty caps seem to have had a production 
problem that caused them to fail after only a short time. I 
think that was a specific problem to this particular brand. 
However, all paper dielectric caps seem to have limited 
lives. The change from paper to cast or dipped plastic was 
supposed to eliminate part of the problem and extend the 
life but all old paper caps are suspect regardless of type 
of case or brand. Test any of these before using them. They 
may be just fine but just age may cause some problems. 
Curiously Sprague sold dipped caps which are described in 
the catalogues as having the same construction as the BB 
caps but they did not fail early.
    Modern film capacitors are superior to the old paper 
caps even when they were new.


--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles
WB6KBL
dickburk at ix.netcom.com