Importance of replacing the electrolytic capacitors in any vintage gears

[RDoc]

Quality problems can happen anywhere. In earlier years I liked HP computers, precisely because of the quality, but then I once had a motherboard from them where dozens of electrolytic capacitors were obviously defective shortly after the warranty period had expired. As such computers were still relatively expensive at the time, I went to the trouble of replacing them. After that, everything worked again for years.

To be fair to Acura, the car was over 30 years old at that point.

 

[Audiofire]

So a summary of it so far, if I understand it all correctly, will be something like:
Just doing a recap for the sake of it seems unnecessary, which can also do more harm than good if you don't know what you're doing.

It's a somewhat unreliable approach, the technical answer is more like this:
"The expected life time shall be about fifteen years at maximum as a guide in terms of deterioration of the sealant."

Servicing Safety and Replacement of Electrolytic Capacitors

Health Hazards "The limited energy in capacitors (E = (1/2) C V²) restricts the duration of the shock, even if there are no circuit breakers to trip. The shock current will be limited by the body resistance, and the duration of the shock will be characterized by the time constant (τ = R C)...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Depending on manufacturing quality, the electrolyte will evaporate 7 to 50 years after the manufacturing date (yeah, theory is that different from practice).

 

[beagleman]

Agree on the soldering. Large caps can have large leads and so can be difficult to unsolder. More importantly, there should be a safety disclaimer in the article. You can get a nasty shock from a cap if it has not been allowed to drain its charge.

When I attended one of my electrical schools, we had a large board of capacitors and an A.C. power supply.

For a joke, we used to "Charge up" caps with the supply and throw them to other students in the hope they would try to catch it, and consequently get a nice zap.