I bought a record the other day. You know a proper plastic one and everything!

Anyhow, once I’d got my deck out of the loft and plugged it all in, I realised my amp sounded horrid – nothing like it used to anyway. I figure the capacitors have degraded over the past 12 years since I last used it (the sound was horribly bright and lacked a good deal of bass) so I was wondering about replacing the old capacitors.

Is it a case of just buying the modern day equivalents and soldering them into place? As long as I keep the same capacitance/voltage etc then i shouldn’t need to tweak anything else should I?

Any guidance would be appreciated!

I think so, never done it though.

You will prob find audiophile brands if that’s your thing.

You don’t mention how competent you are with electronics. Assuming it is the capacitors that have gone, be sure to discharge them first. I didn’t know this when attempting to fix my amp and got the shock of my life. Some hefty caps in old amps.

Apologies if you’re a wizard with the soldering iron.

It is far more likely the cartridge has perished, especially if the amp has also been in storage. It has rubber suspension components that go after a while. Try replacing it with something like an AT95E which is around 20 quid and see if that works first.

Ta for the advice – I’m not too bad with the old iron (made my own LED driver a few years ago)

Didn’t think about the cartridge – it was almost new when I put the turntable away (and it’s an AT95E) so yes it may have degraded and it would explain why the phono stage sounds much worse than the rest……

Cheers!

I presume there’s some sort of line input? Stick a cd / mp3 signal through it to check if the problem is the amp or TT.

I suspect caps mostly last longer than given credit for. We’ve got a Quad 33 / 303 pre/power amp in our kitchen stereo and they were last serviced in 1977! I’m sure they do need a recap by now (especially the big ones in the 303) but it doesn’t sound bad, not horribly bright…Probably a trifle muffled if anything.

Yeah, it’s a NAD 3225pe so not high end stuff. MP3 players etc don’t sound too bad through it so the problem may very well be the cartridge. I don’t really know what a degraded cartridge sounds like!

I have had the amp repaired before many years ago as a Jesus Jones album played too loud blew something. I’m not sure what was replaced but I have a feeling it’s not been right since!

You’ll probably find all the variable resistors have worn out, (treble, bass, balance, etc). They’re normally carbon deposited on a pcb material and the carbon wears thin and then the contact becomes very intermittent.