trinityamps.com

Hey all.

In the build guide there is a recommendation about orientation of the Sozos & Mallory 150's. I have the 150's in my build, and I've done some research and Mallory themselves have said there's no way to determine reliably what the +/- orientation is on their "non-polar" caps from just looking at them.

I've also read that the differences are negligible, but I do see the point of orientation for sheilding purposes.

The question is does it make a noticable difference? Is it worth the time/effort to test the Mallorys to determine the orientation?

Probably not, but it can't hurt!

It can help reduce a bit of noise and improve tone. How much, thats subjective.

In the newest revision of the Triwatt documents in the Resource forum Stephen shows how to test for the outer foil.

Guess I should have looked at the updated docs more closely...

I have the thing built now so I'm not gonna worry about it. I may swap to Sozo's at some point and I will orient them "properly" if I do that.

There were very small differences in how the 150s are oriented. We've done a few tests to determine the orientation and some 1`50s were very hard to determine. In my mind, this means the impact is probably more theoretical. We also found there was no consistency in orienmtation and labelling. The SOZOs make it easier & I guess theoretically quieter.

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Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

When I tested the caps on the 'scope, I found that with the 1nF ones there was hardly any difference in noise pickup either way round. With the 0.01uF (10nF) and higher it got proportionally more and more significant. It was enough to convince me that it was a good idea with the Triwatt to make use of the outer foil, given the high gain levels in the amp.

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Great tones come in small glass jars!

kurtlives & I also did a test on a board he built and found similar results but not quite as significant in the higher values. Still, we oriented them according to the test - can't hurt!

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Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps