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Anyone compared the telos and cardas? Sonic differences or if they work at all?
Thank you.
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.... the Telos over the Cardas, with the Telos gold RCA caps sounding richer, but slower, than the Telos platinum RCA caps, and with the platinum having much more HF extension and speed, but adding a touch of brittleness and harshness in certain applications. The Cardas, being aluminum (at least the old, original ones I have are aluminum, as I recall), were fine, non-descript, but not nearly as impressive as the Telos. The Telos seemed to really affect things more.
But they both worked fine, ultimately.
Use the Telos gold if you need warming up and don't mind a slower --but richer-- sound; go for the platinum if you need speed and openness and have no problems with brightness or edginess in your system. Mix and match as needed. (I use all three types currently, BTW. They can balance each other well. Just go slow and take your time.)
One tip: a very slight improvement can be had if you hole-punch out a 1/4" diameter dot of EAR C-1002 and stick it into the RCA cap's head to damp vibration when applied on equipment. On the original Cardas caps (as they have no internal padding or damping) the addition of the EAR 1/4" dot was quite noticeable, while the Telos (which have what appears to be a 1/4" dot of teflon inside the cap's head) did not improve nearly as much as the Cardas, but still got a smidgen tighter and smoother. (Remove the teflon dot if you are going to add the EAR dot, of course.)
Another tweak is to put a favorite type of quartz crystal on the center of the head of the RCA cap's exterior, affixing via some Blu-Tak or similar material. I used clear quartz around 1/8" diameter to fine effect, but feel free to experiment, of course.
Amethyst and other types of quartz will all affect the sound differently, so go into the archives here and check out some of the great posts by Uncle Stu and others about their experiences with different quartz crystals, and how they affect the sound when used in various positions around one's system. It's fun and fairly cheap, and can really improve your sound.
But the ultimate tweak using the RCA cap is to solder a long (15" or so) stranded copper wire (14 gauge or smaller) to the RCA cap's head (buff off any logos and clean the cap's surface using a dremel attachment prior to soldering), and then solder a solid copper alligator clip on the 15" wire's other end. Attach the alligator clip to the "-" (negative) terminal of a battery-capacitor array, as per Uncle Stu's formula (again, see the Tweaks archives for info on the "battery-capacitor tweak".) Put a crystal on the RCA cap's head directly over the wire-to-RCA solder joint as a finishing touch, as well as a crystal on the alligator clip where it bites in the negative terminal of the battery-capacitor array.
Fun stuff!
With a dot of EAR damping material, the wire lead attaching to a battery-capacitor array, and with crystals over the RCA's head and the alligator clip, you will have taken an already fine tweak and given it a bit more improvement over-all than just a stock RCA cap would convey.
Hope this helps.
(YMMV, of course.)
So best of luck to you, and let us know what you hear once you start playing with your new RCA caps.
Cheers,
WS
The Cardas caps are stainless steel
mixing up cardas capacitors with their anti emf caps.
@ Winston Smith. Thank you so much for taking the time to explain in such detail. I am really grateful...:)Will let you guys know if it helps with the speaker hiss.
PS...Just noticed that you were refering to RCA caps. Your findings would somewhat apply to the XLR caps too?
Edits: 11/12/14 11/12/14
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