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A Simple Way to Test Capacitors.

I wish I had a dollar for every time I have heard or read "I tested the capacitors and they all
test good but it still doesn't work." The person doing the speaking or writing had used a
modern capacitor tester which only puts about 3 volts across the capacitor. That may be fine
for caps used in transistor circuits but not for those used in tube circuits. The voltages in tube
circuits can be as high as 600 volts and rarely are less than 100 volts. To perform a valid test
you must place a significant voltage across the cap. After giving some preliminary
information a method will be provided for making valid tests on capacitors.

Types of Capacitors.
There are two basic kinds of capacitors, electrolytic and nonelectrolytic. Electrolytic
capacitors are used in the power supplies of vacuum tube and transistor equipment. The
testing method described here requires a modification to the basic testing method discussed
below.

The non-electrolytic caps are subdivided into ceramic, paper, mica, and plastic. The plastic
kind are further subdivided into various names of the plastic and all of them seem to begin
with "polly". I'm not going to bore you by laboring through each of the various pollies. The
next time you order capacitors from a catalog or online you will make their acquaintance.

Common Capacitor Troubles.


The most frequent failure mode of nonelectrolytic capacitors is to become leaky. They
behave as if a large value resistor, 100 k ohms or higher, has been connected in parallel with
the cap. As these types of caps are most frequently used to block DC from getting to a
particular part of the circuit when they become leaky they no longer perform that function.

For example in a standard circuit arrangement a cap is used to couple signal from the plate of
a tube to the grid of the next tube. The DC which is also present at the plate of a tube is most
definitely not wanted at the grid of the next. A leaky cap can send some of the DC to the grid
causing lots of trouble.

A leaky cap can manifest itself in several ways. If the grid belongs to an output tube the plate
may glow red. The leaky capacitor places some positive DC on the grid which may partly or
wholly cancel the negative bias. This causes the tube to draw too much current and the plate
has to dissipate more power than it is rated for. To get rid of the extra power it rises to a
higher temperature and gets hot enough to glow red. This is never a normal condition. If the
coupling cap is between low level stages, further back in the amplifier, the resistance in the
plate circuit will keep the tube from dissipating enough power to glow red but the sound will
be badly distorted. You can often verify this using a voltmeter to measure grid voltages.
Tubes that use cathode bias should have zero volts on the grid. Tubes which use fixed bias
should have the negative voltage on the grids and in the case of a push pull output both tubes
should have the same grid voltage.

There aren't many places where even a small amount of leakage can be tolerated but there are
a few. Often a capacitor is connected from some part of the circuit to ground. These are
usually called "bypass" capacitors. That's not a special kind of cap, just the way it is being
used in the circuit. If the resistance associated with the cap is not too large it can work for
many years with a small leakage current. If it is a screen bypass cap it may lower the screen
grid voltage and lower the gain of the amplifier stage. A leaky cap in the AGC circuit of a
receiver may or may not have a significant effect on its operation.

Electrolytic capacitors can fail in one of two ways. One is to be open. The capacitance is
reduced to a very small value because the electrolyte has dried out. It will no longer provide
filtering and the symptom will be a strong AC hum in the radio or amplifier.

The other failure mode is to conduct a heavy current when the operating voltage is applied.
This will blow the power supply fuse if the equipment has one. In an all American five radio
such a capacitor will burn out the rectifier tube. Note that such a capacitor may test as good
on a tester intended for transistor electrolytic capacitors.

One more failure mode of capacitors is to develop a series resistance. This is abbreviated
ESR which stands for effective series resistance. This failure mode is difficult to test for
using simple equipment such as is being discussed in this article. It happens much more often
to electrolytic than to plastic film capacitors. In a power supply it will manifest itself as
increased ripple in the power supply but the capacitor will test good using the technique
described on this page.

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