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[Nick in 't Veld]

Hey everybody,

In a preamp unit with 16x preamps I have removed one coupling cap per preamp. Now I want to remove another cap per preamp, but is it also possible to just bypass the cap with a wire and let the cap in ? I don't want to use a bypass cap but pure a wire to bypass the coupling cap.
Or does this result in problems or sound degradation ?

The unit is sounding al lot better without these caps (electrolytics) and I'm not scared of DC.

Thank you!

[rodabod]

Nick in 't Veld wrote on Tue, 28 October 2008 15:40

I'm not scared of DC.

Good luck!....

[zmix]

Nick in 't Veld wrote on Tue, 28 October 2008 11:40

Hey everybody, In a preamp unit with 16x preamps I have removed one coupling cap per preamp. Now I want to remove another cap per preamp, but is it also possible to just bypass the cap with a wire and let the cap in ? I don't want to use a bypass cap but pure a wire to bypass the coupling cap. Or does this result in problems or sound degradation ? The unit is sounding al lot better without these caps (electrolytics) and I'm not scared of DC. Thank you!

What exactly are you doing?  Specifics, please. What gear, which cap, what's the rating

[bruno putzeys]

I believe Nick's question is: "having ascertained that AC coupling can be dispensed with, can one just put a shorting wire across the coupling cap or does the cap have to be physically removed."

In that case the answer is: It doesn't matter. You can leave the cap installed. When you've shorted it, it no longer does anything. That way if you want to undo the mod you can simply remove the wire.

[Nick in 't Veld]

Thank you, Bruno !
That's exactly what I wanted to know.

[Tdstotler]

I have done this with great success on our MCI 636. I had a few older techs give me this advice and it really cleaned up the audio path alot. Worse case scenario if you take it out and here any issue just put the cap back in. I pulled about 300 caps out of the mci 2 years ago and so far so good.

[Jim Williams]

You will have better results if you dump the 5534 opamps and go with precision opamps. The LME49870 will run at + - 22 volts and is precision. It has little DC offset, about 100 uv. The input bias current is also much lower, 10 na vs 500 na for the 5534. That will help reduce switching pops and pot scratch. It's also much quieter, 1.9 nv vs 5 nv. They also sound much better as well.

[sodderboy]

300 caps?  Dish, gurl!
Mike