TFFer, JAM, pointed this out to me. But on a couple other amp boards, someone posted pics of Sprague Atom cut open. I think it started over at Hoffman's boards but it surfaced on Weber's, too. Apparently there's been talk of them being a little cap inside a big cap can.
I do know that Sprague announced that the manufacture of the Atoms had become obsolete. Now I understand why. Also why they're so expensive.
Someone then wondered if this was how they always made them. Someone posted one from '76 or '77.
From el34world.com:
Quite interesting.The "problem" with Atoms is: they published the Sizes in the late 1940s/1950s, they must continue to make them THAT size or a few customers will whine, but the old fat paper/foil materials have been obsoleted and are no longer used. So you get a better cap, which is smaller, but they have to put it in an old-size can. The 50% excess space is for no electronic reason, it is just to give a mechanical "Exact Replacement".
So what you got is a newer better cap in an old-size can.
> are Sprague Atom caps being constructed/built/manufactured to the same specification that they used to be?
No. They can't get the old materials. New materials ARE better.
> have they taken short cuts, cuts that have affected long term reliability or even short term, cost actions that have put a reduced quality product into the hands of the consumer.
You forget how bad electrolytics were in the 1940s. The new ones ARE better. Reliable e-cap production is a very high-purity process and such manufacturing has come a long way since Atoms were introduced. (They once used raw borax; now it is all extra-refined electrolytes.) Early e-cap production used foil and paper much thicker than really needed, because they didn't have anything thinner; increased demand spurred right-thickness materials. If you think an old one "sounds" better, it is probably aging processes or just self-deception.
> Anybody have an OLD sprague they can dissect?
I had a couple of the Original 1930s Spragues. They came in a wax box instead of a can. The box held a turd just like seen above, just like any asian cap (except asians tend to use a lighter color paper). A 16uFd 450V turd was about 8 times the cubic volume of TubeGeek's 16/475 Atom, filled most of the box. They were utterly dead, and had probably been dead for a half-century.
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Originally Posted by Kap'n
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