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In Reply to: RE: Please, some enlightenment for the casual reader... posted by ljb1 on October 21, 2015 at 10:59:37
PEC = Packaged Electronic Circuit. An early implementation of circuit integration/miniaturization. Usually contains ceramic caps and/or carbon film resistors on a ceramic substrate. PECs were specialized designs to accomplish a specific function so there were scores of them produced, all different. Typically used where cost or space savings was important...like AA5 AM radio. The one in the attached pic is the low filter module for a Mac MX110 that uses other PECs for hi filter and tone controls. This one ~ 1"x3/4"x3/32"and contains 3 caps and 4 resistors. Usually assoc with tube equipment but also in early SS products. Visually IDed by appearance. The spawn of satan from an audiophile perspective. Others may disagree.
Edit: Before the Internet correctness police strike, I've also seen PEC = Printed Electronic Circuit.
Edits: 10/21/15Follow Ups:
Thanks! It would appear the amplifier section of my Sansui 1000a has 3 of these travesties - 1 for the tone control section and 1 each for the hi/low pass filters, respectively. I assume, if space can be found, that these can be replaced with discrete components?
ljb
Yes, if you have the space and the correct circuit you can replace the PECs with discrete components. I did just that with one of my MX110s for lo and hi filter PECs. Did this mostly because a couple of PEC resistors had drifted way off value and not for cap sonics. The drifted resistors set the operating point of one of the 12AX7 buffer amps. I designed a couple of PCBs just a little larger than the PECs to neatly contain everything.
In a perfect world I'd replace the tone control PECs too but it's so tight in there, the sonic improvement wouldn't be worth the considerable effort.
An observation is that many owners of restored vintage equipment rave about the vast improvement in sound they experienced when the obvious ceramic coupling caps were replaced with the current cap flavor of the day. Little do these enthusiastic cap promoters know of the ceramic caps still lurking in the infrequently replaced PECs. Power of suggestion?
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