Capacitor burn in, Capacitor Cooker? Need help...


Okay thinking of a new pair of output caps on my preamp, I have changed them before with excellent results.. However they sounded good off the bat, I decided to run the pre with some really cheap tubes for somewhere around 7 days or nearly 200 hours with a load on them via RCA's with Resistors on them to very good results..
And yes they sounded 5 times better after this...

I do not want to do this again honestly, and in this application this time will be pretty difficult to pull off, I have heard of somebody or some other method around to cook the caps on their own somewhere vs. having to run them in the component they will be installed.

Anybody know about this, or any good ideas?
Thanks
undertow
For a poor man's break-in, solder the cap to some lamp cord and plug into AC for a month or so.
Dgarretson, exactly how? Just take an old 2 prong power cord attach one lead of the cap to the neutral and the other to the Hot and plug in?

First not sure this is a great idea, but secondly being AC power is back and forth reversomg all the time might do more harm than good to burning in a DC single direction capacitor being used in a DC application such as an audio component, or speakers being used in one current flow direction. I think you need a constant regulated DC source of some sort do do this correctly and be effective, as well as safe, and probably not much more power than about 9 to 15 volts DC or something it seems.

But I could be wrong, I did see a guy that makes such a device using any old transformer from like a VCR or something and it steps down to 9 volts with a like resistor or something etc making up a simple circuit etc.. To make a nice Cap cooker, but I was looking for a more simple solution.

I just don't think a 120 volt A/C fluxuating home power outlet would be the right solution for a DC single direction application cap.
Send Chris an email at VH Audio and see what he recommends. He does this very thing with the V Caps that he sells.
The coupling caps I know are all rated for high voltage AC or DC. I've broken in bunches wired in parallel across zip cord into an AC outlet. But I suppose the ideal burn-in would run the voltage up and down through the cap's range and use a resistive load to drain it constantly.
Wire them in series with any 100 watt lamp and let them run a week or two.

Not recommended for low voltage polarized lytics.

Regards
Paul