New SOZO caps,looks cool!

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bmf5150

Member
Messages
255
looks like sozo has new caps.i hear there mustard cap vintage are based on some 60s sweet sounding mustard caps where as his old sozo caps where based on the 70s mustard.yes,i hear the mustard are different sounding!i guess the new caps are hand made.george from metroamp has tried the new ones and seems to rave about them!
http://www.sozoamplification.com/index.html
 
T

TheAmpNerd

Member
Messages
1,056
bmf5150 said:
looks like sozo has new caps.i hear there mustard cap vintage are based on some 60s sweet sounding mustard caps where as his old sozo caps where based on the 70s mustard.yes,i hear the mustard are different sounding!i guess the new caps are hand made.george from metroamp has tried the new ones and seems to rave about them!
http://www.sozoamplification.com/index.html
Click to expand...

I didn't see anything new.
Can you point to the right direction?
 
MojoHand

MojoHand

Member
Messages
340
It's great to see that they're working at expanding and improving their product line. I've used Sozos in a couple amps and really liked the results. Now if they'd only print microfarad values on their caps - instead of cryptic "capacitance codes" - I'd be really happy.

That's a pretty big price differential between the old caps (.0022uf - $1.65) and the new ones (.0022uf - $7.95) but it won't stop me from trying them. Also, it looks like they're starting to cater to the hifi audio crowd. Where audiophiles go, pricing madness soon follows. :rolleyes:
 
B

bmf5150

Member
Messages
255
yeah,i know a guy who loves the sozo in his amp for classic marshall sound,but likes the solan caps for a more peacemaker sound!
 
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tybone

Member
Messages
1,077
Back in electronics class in high school, mustard caps were all over the place. I used them for a few things not knowing they were much admired. It wasn't until I opend up a LPB-1 that I repaired that I said "Hey, isn't his one of those caps?. I am sure i could have had a bag full of them if I wanted to at the time.


Oh well.
 
hasserl

hasserl

Member
Messages
4,708
Not to start a heated discussion about this, but IMO Sozo is a practioner of the PT Barnum Method of Marketing and Advertisement.

I know some of you are just infatuated with this type of thing, and I am not going to persuade you that you are wasting your time and money. But maybe I can help someone who is just getting insterested in these things to not get suckered in by the hype. Here is a good article that you may find informative (then again you may not): http://sound.westhost.com/articles/capacitors.htm

Note that this is geared toward the audiophile, not the guitar amp geek. But most of it is pertinent just the same.

Some quotes I especially liked from the Conclusions, many of which can be applied to things like special speaker cables and power cords and reverse phased speakers:

If wine or pharmaceuticals were tested the same way as audio, we would be in a very sorry state indeed.
Click to expand...

That sighted tests are not only tolerated but encouraged is testament to the level of disconnection from reality that many 'magic component' believers obviously suffer.
Click to expand...

One thing you can count on ... if anyone wants to sell you 'special' capacitors, designed to replace 'inferior' types (such as polyester, aka PET, Mylar®, etc.), then you know that there is a problem. These vendors are cashing in on the audio snake-oil bandwagon. Like cables, many of their offerings are likely to be of good quality, but at many times the genuine value of the part. Others will be perfectly ordinary parts that have been re-badged. For example, there are many capacitors sold as polypropylene that are actually PET or Mylar. It seems that no-one has ever heard the difference, simply believing that it is polypropylene, so therefore sounds 'better'.
Click to expand...

I have never seen the specifications for snake oil as a dielectric, but I expect it to have rather poor performance overall. With 'magic' components, in the end everyone loses.
Click to expand...

And maybe the most important:
Perform all the blind tests you can with capacitors used in real circuits. Having done this, if you still think there is a difference (and can demonstrate it to others in a blind test), then you will probably be the first to do so.
Click to expand...
 
scottosan

scottosan

Silver Supporting Member
Messages
716
Here's my $0.02 while I'm not a big fan of all of the "Marketing and Hype" fads, I have tried the Sozo's in several builds versus real mustards, mallories, orange drops, Ero's, etc... and the Sozo's are supurb and are currently my cap of choice. What I do not like is Sozo and companies like Mercury Magnetics that claim to "exact" copies, but better. How can it be both? Not to say anything bad abut either, it's just irritating and insulating? If they are great products, let your product gain it's own identity instead of name dropping.

I could have any cap company do a batch of caps in the collor yellow, tell them the value, material, rating and then market it as "based on the mustard cap". I do think he sifted through alot of different cap makers to see what sounds best, but i highly doubt tons of mony was spent disecting and reverse engineering every layer of a real mustard. I tend to thing he is simply having a cap maker do batches of modern caps to hisand rebranding with his name.
 
Chiba

Chiba

Platinum Supporting Member
Messages
9,032
Oh, but Sozo **IS** printing the values right on the caps. You just have to know how to read the code.

Example:

103K - this is a .01 uF cap.

10 is the value in picofarads, in this case 10
3 is the multiplier - how many zeroes you add, in this case 3
Total value 10,000 pF. To convert pF to uF, go left 6 decimal places.

The letter after the 3 numbers tell you the tolerance, which most people don't care about in caps I guess. The ones you'll see most often in amps are F (+/- 1%), G (+/- 2%), J (+/- 5%), and K (+/- 10%).

So our cap in the above example is a .01 uF w/10% tolerance.

If you see another code after that, a letter-number-letter code, that has something to do with the temperature range (low & high) the cap will function at plus the capacitance change based on temps outside that range. I don't remember those codes though.

Here's the full list of 'third digit multipliers' for you

third digit - multiplier
0 - 1 (face value)
1 - 10
2 - 100
3 - 1,000
4 - 10,000
5 - 100,000
6 - no use
7 - no use
8 - .01
9 - .1

Does that help any?

As far as Sozo's marketing capabilities, well, a close look at their website gives a good indicator as to the price difference. The $1.65 caps are 'Made in USA'. The $7.95 caps are 'hand made'.

You guys around here certainly know that anything 'hand made' commands a premium price.

--chiba
 
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