unidentifiable components...

[Rodgre]

The thread regarding the "secret" Way Huge IC was really enlightening and I give Mr. Huge a lot of credit for being a good sport about it. I learned some useful things from that thread.

It also got me thinking about boutique pedal builders and how they may sometimes go to lengths to disguise their circuits by throwing in red herring circuitry not to mention gooping components and grinding off numbers.

Which brings me to my next question. I recently got a couple of old (circa 94) boutique pedals that sound pretty cool, and I'm really curious as to what is going on with the circuitry. I've figured out the schematic to one quite easily except that there is one component for the life of my that I can't recognize. It looks a little like a silver electrolytic cap, but it's encased in clear epoxy or plastic, and has a clear fresnel lens-like disc at the top of it. Off the top of my head, the markings say something like 10000 J on it.  Could be a cap. it's in parallel to another cap across the power supply. Any ideas?

Makes you think.... would someone go to the lengths of creating a unique-looking fake component?

Doubtful in this case, as nothing else is hidden.

Roger

[Stuart]

Sounds like a 0.01µF polystyrene cap.

Stuart

[R.G.]

Stuart's right - it's a 0.01uF polystyrene cap, most likely.

I can see that I made us all more healthily suspicious  8-)