We stopped using Panasonic caps earlier this year and started using mainly Nichicon or sometimes Rubycon caps.
The simple reason is that most Panasonic caps don’t have “Panasonic” printed up the side, they instead have an “M” logo for Matsushita.
This confused some customers who were asking us why we weren’t using the advertised Panasonic capacitors as late as 2017. People were assuming we used off brand capacitors, which is something we stopped doing in 2014. Some people would then go to a forum and state that we still weren’t using Panasonic capacitors. We suspect that this info was relayed to more respected forum members, who repeated it. This is damaging to us, we can’t afford to be spending extra money on well renowned brands only for people to then assume we don’t use them. It costs us sales.
Because Nichicon and Rubycon are equally regarded Japanese manufacturers, we now use their capacitors *purely to avoid controversy because they actually print their name in full up the side of their caps.*
We’ve tested a whole bunch of these capacitors and they perform just as well as the Panasonics.
We do not source our caps from potentially dodgy sources. We buy in bulk from respected US distros, most commonly digikey. This is to avoid getting bootleg caps. If digikey ever end up accidentally sourcing bootlegs (these things can happen), we’re sure we’d hear about it pretty quickly - as opposed to remaining in the dark about it.
We still have Panasonic capacitors in stock however! If you feel you’d prefer them, perhaps because they are a more well known company outside Japan - just ask. Actually we’d be quite happy about this because we ditched an entire reel of thousands of Panasonic caps on seeing this information again repeated on a forum.
Note that we have been covering the caps up with heatshrink of late - purely to isolate the signal from other lines. If you cut this away, and you’re welcome to without losing your guarantee - you’ll see “Nichicon” or “Rubycon” printed up the side. Or for slightly older cables, possibly the Panasonic “M” logo.
We’re going to be changing our methods soon to make these caps more visible, at any rate.