Quotation from the email to me: from Dr. Serge SchmidlinSince 5 years I am a MJ subscriber in addition to many other audio publications around the world.
Since then, I am always looking with fascination to Mister Sakuma Susumu's articles as they really are very different from the others and as I also like to build SE amplifiers that do not contain one single resistor.
How much better the sound is with only coupling transformers (silver wound on custom iron) really is surprising and this way one gets much closer to the musical emotion.
Some time ago, while screening paper in oil capacitor on a world wide basis I was surprised to notice that many NOS items do in fact produce very bad sound. We were lucky here in Switzerland to have a producer that was manufacturing very outstanding designs, but they stopped production in 1995.
This production was due to one single man who in the meantime retired. However, in 1996 I decided to check whether it was possible to take this production up again, in collaboration with this retired engineer.
This was not an easy task but since November 1997 we are in the very lucky position to have an even improved version of a paper in oil capacitor available on a more confidential basis.
Houndreds of prototypes were produced and listened to, the oil, the housing, the electrodes, even the paint had very important influences upon sound.
This really is the only oil cap that is exclusively produced in order to get the most natural sound possible with DHT SE amplifiers. As we know that Sakuma amplifiers very often do use 8 to 10 uF oil caps in the high voltage power supply, we would be pleased to send you and Mister Sakuma Susumu 3 items of our 10uF/1600VDC (free of charge of course) only to get your impressions about their influence on sound through a Sakuma amplifier/system.
Although Sakuma mounted it on the chassis with his poor hand made metal fitting, I recommend you to according Dr. Serge Schmidlin's advice to get more excellent reproduce tone of Kristall Cap.
Dr. Serge Schmidlin told:-
We also included tabs for the wiring of the caps as well as some free silver wire sample for you or Sakuma San to try in the amp wiring or wherever you like.
You will also get pictures and documents of our silver SE OPT and potentiometer-transformer.
For fixing the caps onto a chassis, although the best always is the tabs up, I know that most of the people have the tabs down, looking into the amp's chassis.
We do not like the sound of the usual metal fixing clamps that have some physical strain on the cap. We tried many and finally adopted a original system that in top of its convenience, insulates the cap from the amp's chassis vibrations.
We included in the parcel some 3M mounting tape that should be displayed around the capacitor's tabs on what is its upper side and what is becoming the lower side if they are mounted upside down.
If the amp's chassis is free from grease and dust, this way leads to an extremely tight coulping, and in some cases we were even able to sustain the amp by the cap!
Thank you again Dr. Serge Schmidlin for the new world.
Keep your great job!
