What you need 4 recapping your vintage stereo equipment

This is a basic list of what you'll need to know and what you'll need to change your ageing electrolytic capacitors in your vintage amplifier/receiver or whatever you have.I've had several years of being a technician and have been handling a soldering iron since I was a young teenager, but just recently have some experience that could be useful to folks out there who want to achieve the same goals I have: and that is, better sound.1. Go to Wal-Mart/K-mart and buy some 91% Isopropyl alchohol and some of the cheap Q-tip swabs (not the Q-tip brand, the el-cheapos) I buy mine @ wal-mart, the 1.50 or something package of 500. I also use a .99 cent spray bottle filled with alchohol to spray the tips instead of dipping them. (The 91% leaves no residue gepaired to the 70%)2. Soak the Q-tip in the alcohol and clean off the excess flux from the circuit boards...alcohol is the solvent for flux. Flux causes crosstalk, distortion, signal loss/gain, and most importantly, causes premature failure of the geponents on the topside of the circuit board. The gains from doing this is lower noise floor, cleaner sound, more reliable operation of the unit. In some cases, you have to clean the top side of the boards too since it goes everywhere when they made this stuff.3. Do this to every printed circuit board in the receiver or amp! With the big monster receivers, you'll use over 1000 swabs easily.4. Manufactures of most electronics project the lifespan of the gear they make at around 10 years max. If you get more than that without changing/repairing anything, consider yourself lucky. That projection, is less now with cruddy parts and shoddy workmanship on today's electronics. Lead free solder makes that even less, since over time it turns into a powdery like substance. So be prepaired to change all the electrolytic caps and whatever else may have gone out of spec. I got my idea about replacing the caps in my stuff from the times I've spent as an engineer at a couple of real radio stations. We sent out some of our expensive monitoring equipment back to the manufacturer to be recapped to bring it back into tollerance. The info online has shown me that it's a frequent practice by audio fanatics everywhere to get the best sound from the ol' gear!5. If you don't have the service manual yet, get one! It can save your bacon if you run into problems and has the alignment instructions for everything that can be adjusted. 6. You'll need a multimeter to do the alignments...a cheap one can be had at Wal-mart for around 10 bux. Digital for less than 20.7. Have fun listening, and don't be afraid to try another 'brand' of cap to see what they sound like, I' ve learned a lot from doing this. The Nichicon audio grade caps are more natural sounding than others but the Black Gates, Cerafines, and Silmics do offer alternatives! I highly regemend Cerafines for power supplies!8. Join www.audiokarma.org, there's tons of info there for the taking, just type what you're looking for and usually, you can find someone who's done that or is going thru the same thing you are with the same gear you have. There's tons of stuff on Sansui gear