Caps and Tubes


My pre-amp is an Audio Research LS-16. It was more or less inherited. It is the only pre-amp I have ever owned.

Looking down into it through the screen on top there are four large capacitors that say "Wonder InfiniCap". There are some numeric specs on them as well.

I'm wondering if these were original to the unit or added later as an upgrade. It has four fairly large tubes. They do not appear to have anything written on them that I can see. I'm wondering how to know if these are the original tubes.

This is all academic since there is little or no chance that I'd hear much difference between different types of caps and tubes but I'd still like to know if they were original or not. Of course if no one knows I can contact AR.

Thanks,

George
n80

Showing 1 response by soundermn

To answer your question on replacing tubes... they simply pull out and you can replace them by gently pushing new ones in.  Give them a little wiggle as you pull gently, and they should come right out.

If one fails, you don't need to replace all 4, but if you don't then you'll have a mismatch.  The new one will operate at a higher level than the old one.  You may or may not notice.  I would replace in matched pairs, at least.  

If it sounds fine, I would wait until one fails.  You never know... the system may have only had a few hundred hours of use, and the tubes should last thousands of hours.  Don't replace them just because they are old... you may end up spending money for nice NOS tubes when you already own good, usable vintage tubes.