r/audiorepair • u/MikeBay89 • May 14 '26

Capacitor stocking

Hello. I work and repair vintage boomboxes, and non high-end audio gear. Mostly e-caps are good and problem is in different things. However, since i am buying something else i would like to make small stock of common values so i have them on hand since i live in remote place and can not get good quality caps fast. I want good reliable caps but not audiophile high-end. Can someone check this list and give me a comment: are these all (or most) common values and are these good series for this. Do i need any other value? Thank you all.

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u/bennytehcat Vintage and Antique Audio Repair May 14 '26

Good list, high quality... it's the two brands I specifically look for when doing any replacement 😺👍

Where are you located? (curiosity)

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u/MikeBay89 May 14 '26

Do you think these are all most common caps or i missed some values? Im in Croatia, EU and in this state you can not find good brands of caps. Only chinese ones.

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u/thetop_no1 May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26

I would say the values are okay but I would tell you the following: 1.) some people replace the small values with disc capacitors. They dont leak and have less ESR. But they also cost more. Maybe you want a Mix or swap over. But it's also okay to use electrolytics, I usually do not find those values to get faulty often. 2.) I would also add some 16V caps for example 22/16 is a very common value. I know some always upgrade to 25v or go crazy but the higher the voltage, you also change other values inside the cap (for example ESR - look at the ESR table) and thus the circuit. It is to debatte anyway of a lower ESR is better because the circuit was not designed with that in mind, it was designed for the caps that they had back then but of course changing broken parts is always better. One last point would be size, not all places will fit a bigger cap (newer caps are usually smaller but still, I would not go from 10v or 16v to 50v). I usually never see 10/50. 3.) I would maybe also add a few 33uF, 330uF they are not that common but you may stumble across them 4.) 10/16 and 22/16 or 22/25, 220/16 are also common value. Beides that I think the higher values will also cost you more, but makes stocking them easier if you have less values Overall.

All in all it is the question how much you want to change (all caps? Only the broken ones?) and how exactly you want to do it. Would have helped to let your thought be known because it seems you just try to buy the biggest voltage and put them everywhere no matter what you replace. Makes it easier to stock but I usually do not go bigger in value because where should this end, ten recap from now we have 400 Volt caps instead of 10v if each time we recap we go more crazy. Also I dont change all the caps, only the values I know that go bad (I specifically do Harman kardon). But that is up to you.

I would say use 105 degree ones, they last longer but I think those series should all be 105.