[Hallicrafters] To restuff capacitors or not?

[Grant Youngman]

> Hi, Grant. I just read your post on recapping old sets. I 
> have two questions: (1) what brands of caps do you consider 
> to be good quality (I've been using orange drops); 

Orange drops are fine. The problem with them, sometimes, has to do with lead
configuration and not performance.  Any good film cap is suitable -- such as
the caps carried at Antique Electronic Supply.

> you mean that there are reasons not to do a wholesale 
> replacement of the electrolytics and paper caps? 


Real "Black Beauties" are almost always bad, but not necessarily all tubular
caps.  I almost always replace wax paper tubulars.  It depends on the
vintage of the radio to some extent.  If a radio is suspect, I generally
"sample" a few caps  and check them with a TO-6 after lifting one end.  And
then only replace if leaky or if a specific fault has been traced to the
cap.  I've actually had to replace relatively few electrolytic caps in
anything c.1960 opr so and newer.  Even the original power supply caps in my
SP-600 are still just fine -- it depends more on the quality of the original
than the age of the radio.

The issue with wholesale cap replacement, if it isn't electrically
necessary, is the potential for physical damage such as broken tube socket
or switch solder tabs and the like.  Why risk it if it isn't necessary :-)

Just my observations -- YMMV.

Grant/NQ5T