For those restoring Walkman electronics.. I’m looking for a recommendation on miniature electrolytic capacitors. I used to use Nichicon M series but they’ve been discontinued. Anyone used Panasonic GA-A? I also work on old Betamovie camcorders which use similar size components. I’d prefer not use tantalum. Aluminum organic polymer don’t usually fit in the tight spaces either. Just curious if one were to choose a miniature electrolytic from a supplier such as Mouser or Digikey for a lasting repair, what they might be using these days. thanks!
The days of capacitor plague are long gone, nowadays anything that is a big brand (Nichicon, Panasonic, Nippon Chemicon you name it) will provide a long lasting repair. Since we are not talking about extreme operating conditions (extreme temperatures, high vibration, high ripple currents, etc.) there's little reason to worry much about the specific capacitors used. So I would choose based on what's available and based on a good cost/performance ratio, keeping in mind that the absolute best "performance" is not always needed. This is, in fact, what manufacturers do when designing and manufacturing a piece of equipment. And, in my opinion, there's little reason to do it differently (unless we want an upgrade of course). If we are to take THT capacitors as an example, there aren't even many options out there to choose from as such caps are used very little in modern electronics, so demand is very very low. For example, if I search for a 220uF@4V on DigiKey, the only THT one that I find in stock is the ECE-A0GKS221B, so that's the only option on DigiKey. I chose this 220uF@4V example as it's a pretty common output coupling capacitor in many portable devices. On SMD ones there are a couple more options, but still not a huge amount. Given this, I think the Panasonic GA-A series are more than good enough for this particular applications, really no reason to worry about using those instead of Nichicon M (both series are top quality).
