Technics SP-10 TT motor capacitors?

Update: Finished recap of the tt deck. The job went well. You do need to be gentle with circuit board traces during cap removal. After the cap job, the deck comes up to speed at 78rpm and stabilizes quickly. Prior to cap job, it searched and took several seconds to stabilize at 78.

Agreed. I'm glad I did it.

Thank you. Since I posted the question, I've found 20 more on the material list residing on the Drive, Control and Connectional boards. I guess I can't fight the physics of electrolytic shelf life, gotta get them all...

Anyone have any experience to share?

Thanks!

My hope is that it will meet factory specs, and continue to do so for the next 20 years. My table takes a bit to stabilize at 78rpm and I'm hoping that gets better. I'm getting up to speed on the service manual and the troubleshooting tree. My guess is that I'd see something a bit out of tolerance now if I checked with a scope, but I'm going to go ahead and do the caps as I do with all old equipment. I've seen too many old guitar amps with real leaky caps to doubt the fact that they will deteriorate after 20+ years. It would be an injustice (in my mind) to not take care of this classic machine as best I can. I have all I need to do this myself, so no big burden, and I enjoy it. You are asking a fair question and I appreciate the dialog.

I've wondered the same thing about plinth or no plinth.

The cap replacement on the SH-10E was pretty straight forward. I used Nichicon caps. No size issues, except finding a physically large enough replacement for the can cap with the chassis mount.

Yes, I have downloaded the service manual and all of the other Doc's. Great resource here! Thanks for the heads up on capacitor quantity.

Currently, the deck is in a furniture style plinth with a marble armboard. I've got a teak plinth to try and will be moving into that next. I sure like what I see with regard to slate plinths...

Thanks, Bill.

Lewm, thanks for the insight. I intend on replacing all and I saw reference to the Panasonic caps elsewhere, so that's the plan. Need to part with the machine long enough to open it up and verify package types/values and get a lay of the land.

Electolytic have a shelf life. It's accepted in the electronics industry. Depends on the application as to how worried to be. Lewm said it well for me:

"There is a certain piece of mind in knowing the lytics are not going to leak and take out an irreplaceable IC. (Most of the ICs in that circuit are no longer made, and some of them were custom built for Technics specifically for that circuit, so not easy to find subs.)"

I just recapped two SH-10E's and found one cap that had broke open and literally leaked. Probably been electrically leaky for years. I guess it depends on how well you think you could recover if a leaky cap damages other circuitry. Not much of an issue in a power supply, but a very unique servo control circuit; I'd rather err on the side of safety.

SH-10E recap. Sorry, didn't really answer your direct question. Since it was a filter cap in a power supply, I have no doubt that I would have seen less noise on the output rail after cap replacement, to say the least. I didn't check though, cuz I've seen this often and I understand this circuit. I don't profess to understand the servo contol circuit, but I understand leaky caps.

Well said, and I look forward to learning more. I'm just getting started with my table. Thanks!

Sure. I can see some value in that. But, that's a ways down the road for me. I just fell into my sp-10 and got an extra power supply off ebay and recapped both, so I hope to not have to worry about DC voltages for a while. I did notice that it was nothing special. I figure I'll get the deck ready to spin and start playing with plinth's, arms and cartridges. I'm "turnin' knobs" in the rest of my system, as well. Got lot's of low hanging fruit to benefit from.

I do wonder about one thing, however. Currently, I have a Grace 840F tonearm with a Grado Ref. Sonata and I get a bit of "the" hum. I'm wondering if there might be an easy way to shield/ground the motor/platter better within the deck. I've read that it's most likely due to the cartridge, but just thinking, since I'm about to crack it open anyway...

Thanks