About Capacitors
J DAMAGE
Posts: 6
Just wondering, what's the diff from a $100 dollar cap, and others priced from 30 -60 dollars,does the price make the diff or are they the same and as good.
Post edited by J DAMAGE on
Comments
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skip the cap unless you have a fairly small amp. it will just be a bandage on the real problem. spend a little extra and just get a hi output alt or poss a good gell cell batt but for the $ of a batt u can prob get an alt.
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Im not a believer in caps either but I will say that generally it seems you get what you pay for and this seems to be true most of all in car audio. If you find Brand A speakers for $100 and Brand B speakers for $300 - chances are the $300 speakers will perform better.polkaudio sound quality competitor since 2005
MECA SQ Rookie of the Year 06 ~ MECA State Champ 06,07,08,11 ~ MECA World Finals 2nd place 06,07,08,09
08 Car Audio Nationals 1st ~ 07 N Georgia Nationals 1st ~ 06 Carl Casper Nationals 1st ~ USACi 05 Southeast AutumnFest 1st
polkaudio SR6500 --- polkaudio MM1040 x2 -- Pioneer P99 -- Rockford Fosgate P1000X5D -
Macleod, the only reason i asked is in some cases one company makes electronics for a couple of othes and they just put the price adjustment on there name, and they don't even make the product, so if you get a cap for $40 and another for a $100 from a company with a name we all are scewed because we will never know who is the real maker of such product.
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sorry for jumping to conclusions and yes i see your point about manufactures. its kinda like std use aaa aa c ect batteries reg and rechargeable. there are really only a handfull of people that make them and slap whatever name on them for the compay that ordered them. i believe that sanyo is the worlds number 1 producer and there is a good chance that any rechargeable you buy is made by them no matter what the package says. i just ordered not one but 2 digital camera batterie for my gf camera and only paid like 12 for both of them shipped direct from hong kong. now granted it took about 2 weeks to get here but it beats paying 35 each at bestbuy. also the ones from hong kong had a higher capacity.
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This is a really loaded question!
Yes, a lot of companies buy caps from a commercial vendor who puts their label on them. Many of these capacitors are not up to the rating they say they are (1 Farad actually only equaling 3/4 at best). I knew a guy who cut apart many different capacitors and many of them were not completely filled with foil (but this was ten years ago at least now).
At that time, Esoteric (streetwires) had the best product and there were two other companies who came close (I think Stinger and Fosgate, but my memory is fuzzy there).
At that time too, it was not possible to build a very high capacitance unit and still keep the resistance low enough for it to actually do any good. I don't know if technology has improved enough that the "20 farad" caps and whatnot that you see today actually do anything useful.
In the same breath, it's useful to mention that the idiotic voltage displays don't do anything but add bling to your install and may actually decrease the effectiveness of the capacitor to the point of making it useless.
In short, my opinion is that capacitance in the system via a good quality unit is never going to hurt the system and will benefit any amplifier. You do have to install it close to the amp/amps and with low resistance connections, etc.
Caps should never be thought of as a replacement for extra batteries or bigger alternators, bigger wire, etc. but hopefully we all know that already. All they do is filter and maintain a more stable voltage for the amplifier to draw from.
