Identifying some old diodes...

[Samy]

Hi.
I have have some old vcr´s and i will use some good stuff that i found inside them. There are a lot of small pots, transistors, caps and diodes but I'm having some trouble to identify some of them.
All small diodes only have a small yellow line, i believe they are small signal diodes.
I have an old Boss DS1 made in Japan and the diodes have a blue line .... after searching some of my old components i found many diodes with those line colors and red and orange too ... Where i can find some info about them ? I have tested some of them and they are OK, i wonder how different are they from the 1N914 ( 1N4148 ) and if someone already used them in fx.

Thanks.

[runmikeyrun]

check them with the diode feature, if your meter has one.  I salvage diodes from old junk too and just try them in circuits to see how they sound.  I'm not mass producing stuff so i don't care what it is, as long as it sounds good.

[zjokka]

I believe, but someone will correct me if I'm wrong that this only matters if you use the diodes as clippers in a distortion circuit. Just used to bad leaky ASY125 Ge transistors as Ge diodes in my Jawari because they checked out right as GE diode (correct voltage drop).

[Hanglow]

They have different voltage drops, - I used my DMM  ones I recycled(also from a vcr - they are good for bits and bobs) got values of 0.75v for the ones with the yellow line and 0.24v with the ones with a pink line. Of course yours might be different..

it might be best to get a dmm with a diode test feature on it. otherwise, pot luck, just mix them up in whatever clipping stages you put into your effects...