Capacitors in Cary PH302 phono amp

Tobes, My experience with the original MIT caps you have are they are better than the older Hovland & Auricaps which are vague and murky - so I wouldn't go back to original. The RTX are very good, but word of warning, used in speaker crossover we have found the internal impedance/inductance characteristics were drifting. Discussions with Richard Marsh shed no light on why. We have compared these original MIT in both tube pre and speaker xover to Hovland ( H was murky ), Mundorf Supreme ( MIT had much better timing and around the same transparency - therefore MIT at 1/4 the price is way better value, Mundorf Silver and Oil ( this had much better timing than the Supreme and I would rate it better than the MIT ). My view is go for Mundorf Silver/Oil, Audio Note Copper Foil ( if you dont like silver ), or Teflon. Beware if you go Teflon - they take weeks to run in. Cheap option is go to MIT PPFXS.

Hmm thanks for your thoughts Dover.

Seems that MIT RTX caps are well thought of and regarded as a nice step up from the PPMFX. Economical too.

The Cary certainly sounds ok with the current PPMFX caps, but my feeling is that its not uniformly transparent across the frequency range. The caps may have nothing to do with this of course, but I'm curious to hear what a couple of well regarded Teflon caps might do for the sound. These seem to be universally praised for their transparency.

PPMFX is a very good base value capacitor by itself. Dont believe every shoot out that comes along on the internet. Bypassing that cap with an RTX or Russian FT-1 Teflon gets you excellent sound for little money outlay.

To quote J.C. Morrison from his blog: "cary audio does it like radio shack would have… in the 70′s, if they smoked crank and gambled on tractor pulls". My guess from the Cary products I've seen is that the original caps were Kimber Caps.

Well, I'm not sure which way to turn now...too many choices.

Maybe I'll steer clear of the expensive Teflon options and go for something in the middle ground.

In no particular order, looking here and elsewhere, these appear to be worthwhile trying and likely upgrade from Multicap PPMFX:

* Multicap RTX
* Clarity Cap MR
* Mundorf Mcap Silver/Oil

The cheapest option - RTX - would appear to be a 'safe' choice.

Dozens of other choices, but I fear my head might explode with the options.

Reb, found one of your posts elsewhere, is it your understanding that Cary use MIT PPMFX as stock parts - ie the caps in my PH302 may be stock for the Mk2 model? (The pic I was comparing my unit to on the Cary website appears to be a Mk1 model).