[simplex1040]

I am rebuilding the capacitor block in a model 95
do these need to be electrolytic for the rebuild?

[Ron Ramirez]

Simplex! Welcome! Great to see you've finally joined us. Took you long enough!

The yellow foil capacitors should have a longer life than any electrolytic; I would use those. I have used electrolytics in those cans previously, but I plan to use yellow film henceforth. Since the values are not real huge (typically 1 and 2.2 uF), they should be manageable. In other words, plenty of room for them in that big can.

[simplex1040]

Thanks for the welcome. I figured I could but wanted to make sure.

[Ron Ramirez]

Well, good luck with that. And don't be a stranger, drop in anytime.

[Arran]

Some guys, like Bob Anderson on his 115DX, are substituting film capacitors for the wet electrolytics that his set originally came with. Since the originals were only something like 8 uf each it isn't too hard to string a bunch of non polarized caps together in parallel. I am planning on doing this with a Marconi type 12 that had a capacitor block with a bunch of 1 and 2 uf caps with an 8 uf amongst them.
Regards
Arran

[Chuck Schwark]

Nothing sacred about electrolytics in power supply filtering.

Back in the days, larger value capacitors (condensers) were not practical to make, until the electrolyte technology matured a bit to have a large capacitance value in a reasonable form factor, as opposed to gigantic wax-paper caps to get same capacitance. Electrolytic chemistry is polarized and one must adhere to the (+) and (-) for the chemistry to work correctly. Today's non-polar metal-film types will work the same without special hookups.

...and now back to your regularly scheduled program...

Chuck