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Psvane Teflon capacitors real or fakes?

These are great looking capacitors and supposed to be competing against the Audience, Rel, V-Cap, and Sonicap Teflon capacitors. A couple of my tweaky friends who have no end to new capacitors gave them a try and had one quit after a month or so, and with the wire cut off, no return possible. So they cut it open, yes they are curious, and according to them, the guts looked like mylar, measured like mylar??? Could these not be Teflon caps after all??? I open this for discussion with some of the tweaky electonic minds out there to get to the bottom of this. If they are not genuine teflon, I would not want fellow audiophiles to get ripped by another false claim. But to be fair, real verifiable data should be submitted here, no guesswork. I trust my friends, but I did not do the test, so I open it to other philes. Hey, I like a great deal too, but if it is not as advertised, I get pissed too. Take a look fellow philes, and lets solve the mystery....Jallen
jallen
grantfidelity's avatar
grantfidelity
21 posts
 
Where did your friends buy the Psvane caps? Can you post their pictures?

I have just cut open one cap from our stock and these are the pictures - I am no plastic expert but the film does look like teflon, to my eyes.

I put the pictures out for everyone to see, maybe some plastic expert can share some opinion.

How did your friend(s) measure the film coming to a conclusion 'measured like mylar'?

We have been dealing with the people at Psvane Audio for tubes and caps for years. I met the owners and it has never come across my mind even remotely that they could outright lie. Our tube amp tech have these installed into 845 amps and have been running it over 6 months with no problem at all.

If a seller refuse to take return of caps with broken lead, that's understandable. Failed in 30 days? That should be covered by warranty.
grantfidelity's avatar
grantfidelity
21 posts
 
Not sure how to post pictures in the forum - but here are the links of the pictures posted to our website.

http://shop.grantfidelity.com/Psvane-Copper-Foil-Teflon-Film-Caps-0-47uF-600V-pair.html

click on image to enlarge.

I have seen many many knock-off products in China including Solen caps - but if someone actually counterfeit Chinese caps now, high end audio is about to become a mine field :)

Rachel @ Grant Fidelity
sniper9999
6 posts
 
Dear JAllen, it is not difficult to differential teflon from mylar, sophisticated equipment is not necessary. You just need to set a soldering iron to 270 deg. Celsius, and poke the tip onto the film, teflon can stand this temperature and mylar will melt like butter.
I am also interested in this cheap copper teflon and will buy a pair for evaluation from an authorized dealer here. Will let you know the results very soon. Stay tuned!!!
serengetiplains
3 posts
 
I purchased some Psvane capacitors a few weeks back and immediately returned them after measuring them. I have a QuadTech capacitance meter that measures DF to six decimal places. Teflon capacitors normally measure about 0.000100 DF ("100"), with the better among them measuring 20 and lower (I measured one at 6 just today). The Psvanes measured 5500, 5500 and 3500 for the three caps I measured. One dielectric that measures that terribly is mylar. Given the small size of the Psvane capacitors for a 600VDC rating, combined with the very poor DF measures, I assume they were mylar caps. (Physical size of a capacitor is determined by the thickness of the plate and dielectric. Dielectric thickness is determined by target voltage and dielectric constant. The dielectric constant of mylar is 3.5, which is almost twice that of teflon, which allows a mylar capacitor to be smaller than an equally rated teflon cap.)
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