Black Gate WKZ capacitor
One day, a few friends of my, told me to try a BlackGate WKZ in the power supply
instead of those old papaer-in-oils.... Well, BalckGate was known by me, not
for its sound but more for their prices!! However, I know these friends of my,
and I must say that most of the time they don't sit on their ears... So, having
saved some money, I took the "risk"and ordered one in England. A 47mF+47mF/500V
would substitute the two 50mF GEC oils that were in my preamp. After 5 days,
the postman brought me a package with the WKZ. The test could start! I now-a-days
use a Siemens Aa in my preamp and the power supply has to be as silence as can
be due to thei mu of 33... My power supply is a 2mF/10He/24mF/6He/50mF/6He/50mF...
The las two oils were ripped out and the WKZ was put in.
Right from the start, the WKZ immediately revealed its
superb sound. This cap is much faster than an oil! No hissing highs, like normal
electrolytics. All was there at once, with authority! Okay, the bass was not
as coloured and round as using oils, but it was new-out-of-the-box! WOW! That
was a promising start. After a week or so, the music seemed to poor out of the
speakers, this is really good stuff! You'll only want to listen to music with
these caps! After a while a question popped up: How would the system sound when
WKZ was all over the place? I scraped the money and bought more WKZ's.... Fortunately
someone was selling new WKZ's at Marktplaats (Dutch Ebay) for just 75 euro each
(should I say "just"??). So I put in two 47+47mF WKZ's in each monoblock,
eliminating the 6 and 8mF GEC oils that were in there....
In the picture at the left, you can see the unused solderlugs of the oils hanging through the chassis... The WKZ is mounted for testing (I really don't built that way..). The power supply of my mono-blocks are sparate: for the driver and powertube apart. The power tube has a C-L-C-L-C at which the last two caps were replaced by a WKZ, leaving the first cap, a 2mF Oil at its place. The driver has a C-L-C powersupply. Since I run the UX171a at 135V/13mA and use a RGN1064 Telefunken rectifier, both the capacitors could be replaced by one WKZ..
Well, this is the best upgrade I had in years! Really!, you'll have to hear it to believe it! They are not cheap, hell, they are expensive with a big E... But I think that if you buy a new OPT you might have a less upgrade than you could have with these WKZ's... and OPT's are even more expensive....
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