I’ve been doing a bit of work on audio amps lately, so it was a bit annoying when my Tektronix distortion analyser suddenly died.
With a very distinctive smell. I try to avoid using tantalum capacitors in my own designs, so it was one I hadn’t smelt in a while. The older tantalum beads were somewhat unreliable, with a tendency to fail short circuit, crack open and spew their metallic innards in a way that always reminded me of the egg from the first Alien movie.
The innards of the DA4084 are a sandwich of multiple circuit boards connected by random wires, and a bit fiddly to dismantle. And of course the obviously burnt tantalum capacitor was right in the middle of the sandwich.
I guessed it was used for decoupling and the value wouldn’t be critical, so I replaced it with a 10uF electrolytic.
Normal service was restored…
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