Thiel cs2.4 upgrade to cs 2.4 se

@desmond888

Your Clarity Cap plan sounds good. You can save money and space by going with the 250 V version for the larger capacitance value (ie, 10 and 18 uF) and 630 V version for the smaller value (3.9 and 10). Another path to 28 uF is to get 25 + 3. Madisound has the CSA 250 in 25 uF and I think Partsconnexion has the 630 V version of 3 uF. You might also get add a small bypass to each, say 0.1 uF. I’m going to try Multicap RTX at ~1% but Cornell-Dubilier is a worthy contender, among others.

You might also upgrade the 43 uF cap which is a subfeed. That cap is downstream from the 16 ohm resistor so you can go with a lower voltage. Until I started working with Tom Thiel, I considered a 39 uF ERSE Pulse X (100 V?) + 3.9 uF CSA250V. Finally, those 100 uF electrolytics should optimally be replaced with MPT-type capacitors. Again, ERSE PulseX is a worthy contender but you might have trouble fitting those on your boards. At the least, I suggest replacing the electrolytics with fresh ones (see Tom Thiel’s recent post on the Thiel Owner’s thread).

While you’re in there, I highly recommend replacing all resistors with Mills (or Vishay-Mills) MRA-12s. Sonic Craft has all the CS2.4 values although you have to mix and match the old (Mills) and new (Vishay-Mills). Only about $100 for all and makes a worthwhile improvement in SQ.

Thank you guys for all the valuable information. I have just ordered the claritycap csa combinations i suggested earlier. I'm no expert in this area therefore decided to only upgrade a few caps at this juncture. I hope i can complete  the project in dec or jan and share its result with all of you thereafter.

desmond888
Excellent! I am looking forward to the outcome of your cap-replacement project.  Happy Listening!

Hi guys, 

I just realised that there are two versions of claritycap csa i.e 250v and 630v. I have ordered 250v version. Is there any concerned and or any sonic difference?

For beetlemania,

From the thiel owner thread, you have changed all the ceramics resistors to Mills resistors and gained vast improvement. Nevertheless,  I noticed all the original ceramic resistors are rated 10w but Mills MRA12 are rated 12w. Is there any particular reasons that you changed the spec?

630 V version has thicker film. Tom Thiel (and his sources) is confident that will sound better. We are putting 630 V on the coax feed (ie, 14 and 28 uF caps) for maximum SQ. Where you are runnng in parallel to get proper capacitance, you might use a 250 V for the heavy lifting and 630 V for the final icing on the cake. Eg, 25 uF 250V plus 3 uF 630 V for 28 uF cap. The 43 uF subfeed cap is downstream from a 16 ohm resistor and will be a 250 V CSA. Elsewhere, I will be using 250 or 160 V caps, except for the Multicap bypasses which are 600 V.

That said, have fun and please relax about getting this “right”. CSA 250s are certainly going to be a notable upgrade over the OEM caps!

MRA-12 will give you more headroom compared to the OEM 10 W resistors. That is good!