Update: I should have translated the Ebay article from the seller I used. I actually got NOS for $20 each, which is unheard of! Apparently these were desoldered from unused boards. So despite having been soldered once before, the circuit was never actually used making these still brand new!

The Famous Rubycon “Black Gate F” series is on the way!

 

I tried to do this one before, but I ended up getting the wrong type of Black Gates. This time I found a supplier selling barely used  still new 100uF 25V Black Gate F capacitors at $20 each! This may sound like a high price to some, but on the open market they bring $50-$100 each, especially in a rating as useful/common as 100uF 25V. I was very fortunate to find 6 of them for barely over $100 and if they don’t give enough of a change to warrant their cost I have multiple options. I can use them in a variety of other circuits or I can sell them for a profit. Finding hardware this valuable/sought after for a deal carries little financial risk (assuming you can afford to float the cost).

 

 

The Nichicon Muse series is supposed to be competitive with ELNA’s SILMIC and SILMIC-II series, but I prefer the SILMIC series. Knowing that, I wanted to try out some of the famous Black Gates and see if the hype is true or not surrounding these insanely expensive capacitors. Black Gates use a complicated graphite compound instead of the typical film or stacked/multi-section capacitor designs. Finding detailed information on this is very difficult due to how tight lipped Rubycon is on this technology.

 

There is a huge lack of real information on using these capacitors and the few “real” articles are very short (at least compared to my articles/reviews, lol). One of the better of the currently published articles on Black Gates is this one:

http://www.audionote.co.uk/articles/art_black_gate_story.shtml

 

 

Here is a little about the other models of the Black Gate line:

 

Keep an eye out for a new page post detailing this upgrade to my primary XMOS module shown above!