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"The capacitor might not have been doing its job properly if it was installed backwards, but it didn’t seem to really be hurting anything."

This is the buried lede! I am of the opinion that half of the capacitors in any modern circuit are useless; the trouble is we don't know which half.




This guy knew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_Muntz

> He often carried a pair of wire clippers, and when he thought that one of his employees was "overengineering" a circuit, he would begin snipping components out until the picture or sound stopped working. At that point, he would tell the engineer "Well, I guess you have to put that last part back in" and walk away.[14]

Techmoan recently did a video "The story of the 4-Track Cart" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqoglkbe9sc covering most of Muntz life.

On a serious note this is a terrible practice and nowadays wont pass any EMC certification.


You can still do it, you just need to do it in the EMC test chamber :P




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