First post! IC ouput protection...

[MidHumper]

On the Toneczar site he says he doesn't use any electrolytic capacitor in the signal path. Now, I know the amount of distortion that results from an electrolytic is so small that it's hardly important, but well, it's fairly common to stick a 10uF cap after an IC to keep from DC from getting getting to the amp. Is there an alternate way to provide this protection or is there something I'm missing?

[R.G.]

Two ways: use a non-electrolytic cap. These are available in smallish PCB mount packages up to about 2.2uF.

and: use +/- supplies so that the output naturally sits at ground, no cap needed.

[billings]

I've seen parallel non-electrolytic and electrolytic capacitors used in some circuits to mitigate the effects of high series resistance of electrolytics at higher frequencies.  IIRC the AMZ Super Buffer does that.  Given that box capacitors in the 2.2uF range are expensive, as is doubling the driving voltage on a battery-driven effect, maybe that will work as a reasonable compromise?

But obviously I'll defer to R.G. on this one.

[George Giblet]

> is there something I'm missing?

The alternatives have been covered.

As far as tone goes the argument for using non-electrolytics over electrolytics is a bit shakey.  There are a few cases where the polar electrolytics can be reversed biased but in this is where the non-polar electrolytics (NP) come into play.  The distortion can rise a bit if the voltage across the cap isn't kept small.  There are very few cases where putting non-electrolytics in parallel with electrolytics is justified.  In most cases the only real advantage of using non-electrolytics over electrolytics is long term reliability.  Electrolytics can dry out and misbehave/fail over time.  The environment in an effects pedal if very kind to electro's, nothing gets hot, so they do tend to last a long time anyway.  The tolerance and long term stability of non-electro's tends to be better, but, in most places where these electro's are used those aspects aren't important. The non electro's are more costly and larger but like RG said they aren't too big below about 2.2uF (IMHO 1uF's are more in the small  ball-park).  There's definitely nothing wrong with using non electros.