Newby question - 5% or 1% resistors?

[daim]

Howdy,

I am building a GGG Tube screamer, got the PCB and sourced the parts myself.... but after i bought all the resistors i noticed that the ones in a picture of an open TS are the blue 1% tolerance type...
My question is...does it make much of a difference if i use the 5% resistors instead?

Thanks in advance.

Daim

[JKowalski]

You might get a very slightly different sound, but it's not going to matter much.

Most old effects used carbon comp, often with 10% tolerances or higher     5% is okay, IMO.

Consider also that designers use values that are available, not calculated exactly and painstakingly sourced - nothing really in stompbox design is at all built to a 1% precision.

[km-r]

typically, 1% metal film resistors are lower in noise than 5% carbon film types...
so a strategically placed 1% metal film MAY alter the quality of the sound most likely on noise issues.
ive built TS's with only 5% resistors before and noise figures were low, acceptable in most occasions.

[Dai H.]

if the TS you saw had 1% metal film Rs, then I'd say it was most probably modded.

[WhenBoredomPeaks]

I should buy parts for my booster/overdrive project in the future.

I have a lot of carbon film 5%-s, but i should order a few stuff anyways so i could buy a few metalfilm 1%-s. Should i bother with them, in boosters and etc. where are like 4 resistors only?

[captntasty]

It's really an arbitrary decision...  5% carbon film resistors are fine for just about any application...  I bought in to the hype of using 1% metal film at an early stage of building and that's what I ordered when placing orders so I would have stock of all the values I needed.  I also have stock of 5% carbon film r's in some weird values and often times end up using them - I have never really heard any difference in sound or tone...  pick one or the other and stick with it when ordering extra resistors to have for stock.

[km-r]

it depends on the specifications of the circuit... you can get massive gains up to 3k times even with just one transistor.
also depends on your signal chain, if your booster is going to feed a high gain circuit for a more saturated tone, then you should use metal films...

in other words, as rule of thumb, the front end of the signal chain should have lowest noise as possible. its also a good choice to use metal films all the time if youre not that stingy with their price.

i learned a lot here
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=74940.msg609607#msg609607

[daim]

Thank you people for the quick answers... most appreciated javascript:void(0);

[Mark Hammer]

I think everyone would like to be able to design something, based on theory, and have it work/sound exactly as intended because the parts used are exactly the values specified in the design.  Historically, the price differential between components guaranteed to be their nominal value, and components guaranteed to be somewhere within driving distance of their nominal value, made this ideal unattainable for any product intended to provide acceptable cost.  I remember the days when a pack of 5% at Radio Shack would cost you less than 10 cents per resistor (still quite pricey, but then it was Radio Shack), and a metal film equivalent would cost you easily 5 times that.

More recently, though, manufacturing methods have allowed fairly precise components to be made more cheaply, and the price differential is quite modest.  If one had a product that used over 100 resistors, and had to survive with a VERY modest markup to be able to compete against rival products, then the difference between paying a penny each and 3 cents each starts to become critical.  For a hobbyist like us, though, and maybe even for a low volume boutique pedal-maker (<500 pedals/yr), the final difference in production cost is easily justified.  If it adds 50 cents to the parts cost of a pedal that cost you $30 to build, but would cost you $150 to buy, it's money well spent.