Can anyone give me advice about replacing electrolytic caps with tantalum? Is there much of a tone difference?
some past discussion (http://diystompboxes.com/sboxforum/viewtopic.php?t=16466&highlight=tantalum+sound)about this, search (http://diystompboxes.com/sboxforum/search.php)yonder forums...
you can do it, and some people can hear a difference between them. I rarely take seriously any subjective opinions about sonic differences between compononents. It's personal taste. Suck it and see.
Whenever the question of 'replacement' comes up, remember it is a pointless question unless you say "where". For example, a coupling cap will almost certainly have more effect 9if any) on what you hear, than a bypass filtering cap.
If you're going to replace electrolytics, the untilmate replacement is with film caps.
In some cases the cap may be subject to reverse bias. Tants HATE reverse bias and will gleefully crap out on you if their polarity gets reversed. Electrolytics put up with polarity reversal very well in most cases.
As Paul said, the operative part here is "where" the cap is in the circuit.
Take care,
-Peter
I like to replace coupling caps with tants for lower noise, but beyond that there's no point if you can't get film caps.
I think Tants are usually there due to their small size.
RDV
And sometimes (in my own ckts) tants are there for low reverse leakage (that is, when it is 60 mfd and you can't use film).
Be Careful!! Tantalums don't appreciate being put in the ckt the wrong way round (this is especially true of anything above 9V) and may even explode like a small fire cracker. It happens, trust me.
Electrolytics look pretty bad (and tantalums, worse) when examined for linearity with a scope. Steve Bench has a great article on this here:
http://members.aol.com/sbench102/caps.html
Before you run off, I've read a number of posters claiming electrolytics and tantalums are junk, and muddy-up your stompbox signal. Neve mic-preamps have several tantalums right smack in the signal-path, and all those famous mixing- boards of the 60's and 70's used tons of electros --in the signal path--.
Something to think about.
-Eric