quad 303 output capacitor ideas

[kenworthy100]

I have recently bought a second quad 303 to go with my existing one. As always I have completed a full restoration all caps,transistors,trimmers changed bias and voltage reset. Anyway being a sunday when I was doing this I was limited for the output caps so bought a set of Samwha for audio 6800uf 63v from Maplin (already had power supply caps Vishay). I was not expecting a great deal but thought they would do the job for a day or two. Anyway to my surprise they sound excellent and better than the VISHAY BC caps I put in my other 303 a month ago. To rule out anything I swapped the caps between the two amps and suddenly the other amp was sounding just as good. The Vishays and Samwhas are the same capacitance and voltage.

Anyway in view of the bad press Samwha have had for failing and leakage in Samsung televisions I want to get a more reliable cap and seek everyone advice on what they have used in their 303's. Apologies for the length of the thread and thanks in advance for any ideas.

[Reid Malenfant]

Fit as high a capacitance capacitor with the correct voltage rating as you can physically fit in the same space.

The 303 has quite a bit of bass rolloff & an increase in distortion due to the low value of capacitor fitted to the output as standard. Increasing the value will effectively give you deeper bass with better control & lower distortion.

If you want to go mad (not really) then fit a smaller value non polarised capacitor in parallel. Something like a 10uf polypropylene or similar should have benefits in the mid & treble frequencies :)

Good value high quality capacitors I'd recommend would be BHC or Kendeil in the sizes you are going to be looking at.