Does anyone have any experience removing smt parts and replacing them with leaded components? If so, I would be interested in hearing how you went about doing so. The mini-me I am working on has all SMT components, and I would like to replace the majority of the smt capacitors with blackgates/rubycon caps to get rid of some of the grunge I hear from the unit. Thanks for the help.
Just get the leads nice and short. Give the pads some solder and the leads for the caps. Then solder them on and you will be fine.
There are some obvious and maybe not so obvious advantages for a manufacturers to use SM components. I've been reading about how surface mount bypass capacitors are making a huge improvement in 5v digital logic circuits, because the "leads" are so short. The leads are virtually non-existent.