electrolytic caps for pedals?

[FLchuckles]

Just making a casual observation here.  i have a goodly amount of experience with amplifiers....tweeking and all that stuff.

i'm a firm believer in using high quality 'lytic caps for amps.

i'm new with the pedal thing....what i've read so far...it seems that folks don't seem to put much emphasis on this?

comments? opinions?  Thanks!

[merlinb]

All lytic caps are basically the same. Even 'audiophile caps' behave the same way as regular one, i.e., they will produce distortion if you let them. It's a question of whether you care about that distortion. For guitar, we usually don't.

[jubal81]

I only use them for power filtering. Anything with a signal on it gets an X7R MLCC.

[thelonious]

+1 to what Merlin said. Especially in an overdrive or distortion pedal, in my experience the differences between, for example, cheap electrolytics and Elna SILMIC caps tend to get buried under everything else the pedal is doing to the signal. Of course, use your ears---you might disagree. But in most cases, we're just looking for small caps.

I tend to buy more expensive low ESR electrolytics for use around charge pumps, but otherwise I stick to tiny stuff like Panasonic KS or KA series.

[FLchuckles]

cool---  thanks for the responses guys.  wanted to get opinions on it! i appreciate it-

[FLchuckles]

jubal81---  are you talking about multi layered chip capacitors? (did a quick google) 

man- thats new to me. 

[jubal81]

jubal81---  are you talking about multi layered chip capacitors? (did a quick google) 

man- thats new to me. 

Multilayer ceramics. Plenty of through-hole options at Mouser. They're even smaller than disc ceramics and you can get them at 1, 2.2, 4.7, 10uF and more. I'm tempted to put them on the cathodes of my amp. You want to check to make sure you're getting X7R and NOT X5 or for god's sake Z anything.

[thelonious]

I usually go for C0G or NP0 (in both cases that's a zero, not an 'O').

[jubal81]

I usually go for C0G or NP0 (in both cases that's a zero, not an 'O').

That would be ideal, and what I use for small capacitances, but can't get NP0 in sizes you'd use in place of 'lytics.

[thelonious]

That would be idea, and what I use for small capacitances, but can't get NP0 in sizes you'd use in place of 'lytics.

Ah, very good point indeed

[pickdropper]

MLCC are great and the capacitances are getting large enough for X7R (or the occasional X5R) that they can be used in place of electrolytics in a lot of situations.  They are nice when board space is at a premium.

With electrolytics, I am only really picky about them being name brand, high quality caps.  I don't trust the generics.  Generally, most of the brands that Mouser and Digikey carries are vetted, reliable brands and work fine.

[merlinb]

MLCC are great and the capacitances are getting large enough for X7R (or the occasional X5R) that they can be used in place of electrolytics in a lot of situations.  They are nice when board space is at a premium.

It is perhaps worth pionting out that all ceramic caps of the X and Z variety produce far worse distortion than electrolytics, in typical applications (typically an order of magntide difference). C0G/NP0 ceramics are practically distortion free, however.

Capacitor distortion is easy to eliminate simply by making sure the cut-off frequency is deep below the audio range (sub 1Hz for hifi). In other words, use a BIG cap. Of course, that's not possible if you're trying to build a filter! Also, distortion is worse when the cap is used as a coupling cap (CR filter), rather than as a shunt cap (RC filter).

Caps of all types with low voltage ratings  tend to perform worse than equivalent devices with higher voltage ratings.

None of this really matters for guitar, of course, because there is no standard against which we can measure the guitar signal to determine if it is 'correct' or not! Any sort of distortion could be the sort you're looking for...