The EICO 150 Solid State Signal Tracer Part 5: Testing the removed capacitors.
Wednesday, May 6, 2026 at 06:42:19
As I have a decent capacitance meter with ESR capabilities, I decided to see exactly how bad the removed parts are. For the test, I’m using a FNIRSI LC1020 that I’ve shown to be more than accurate enough for hobby purposes, and you can read my analysis at this link.
I tested the parts in no particular order save from smallest to largest. These are all going in the junk bin, so there’s no need to mark them as to what they are - I can always retest if need be, but these won’t be used again except as other test parts.
For the following chart, the first column is marked value. The next two columns are values read at a particular frequency, in μF. The last two columns are ESR at a particular frequency, in Ω.
The smaller ones have fairly high ESR at low frequencies, with that decreasing as F increases. That’s expected - they’re still shot, but low value parts generally have higher ESR. Larger values, like the filters, were fine - but old. They got replaced as a matter of course.
For the smaller values, these were generally good save for the fact that I’ve seen those little teal parts short. They were replaced with good quality WIMA capacitors, or in the case of the 0.01μF, a new axial film.
A note on the 0.01μF part - the meter refused to stabilize when reading ESR on this one. I assume it’s probably going bad. Since it’s the input blocking capacitor for the RF side, it’s probably for the best that it was replaced.
There’s still some work to do as the capacitors actually need to be replaced (yeah that should have been first!) and then the speaker install and test. Stay tuned!
Next part of this series: https://wereboar.com … ll-value-capacitors/
Previous part of this series: https://wereboar.com … t-4-its-the-speaker/
Wrapup and final thoughts: Coming soon.