Broken Capacitor help???

[jhanson25]

Today for one reason or another my Route 66 pedal had a lose part inside... open it up and the cap labeled "223j100" had broken off the compressor PCB. I have googled this part number to no avail. Does anyone know where I can locate one?? I am a working musician and have to fix this quickly. Thanks so much!!!

[Earthscum]

What does it look like? Green plastic coated, brown/tan/orange disk? I'm guessing the latter.

223 means .022uF, or 22nF (same value, more likely listed as .022uF). J is the tolerance, and 100 is most likely the voltage rating. Tan Disk is a Ceramic Capacitor. Green, or plastic looking, is "poly film" type capacitor. You should be able to use either one for replacement. Radio Shack has poly ones if you can't find a real electronics component store nearby.

ETA: The "J" tolerance code shouldn't matter, I don't think. The ones RS carries are either J or K, K being 10% tolerance, and J's are 5%.

Capacitor Codes - Transwiki

[jhanson25]

It's grey and appears to be 1/4 in sq.

[Earthscum]

Hopefully R.G. will be along to identify it, but being a Visual Sound product, I guess it's probably a box-film cap.

Does the pedal still work? Is the cap broken off at the leads, or is it just an empty shell? (I had a box-film cap fall apart on me... I was rough with it, beyond reason, but still. Things happen).

[jhanson25]

Turns out its a cap for the OD side of the pedal.  Compressor works just fine.....  No OD when i turn it on.

[Earthscum]

Aha. It's hard to tell if there's anything else wrong, but I'd save the part, and just grab a poly-film cap from the store, .022uF (should look like this)

It will replace the other just fine, but may be just a bit taller. Not for sure, though. I say save the broken off cap because VS may be interested in seeing it, not sure. I know some companies like to see when stuff breaks just for their own records (improve products, etc), but not a bunch. Better to keep it around for awhile just in case... may need to match it up later down the road to get that "OEM" fix some people get so stuck on 

[jhanson25]

Im wondering just purely out of curiosity how the OD side would sound if I just bridge the empty space with some solder?    Any ideas right off hand how an OD would sound minus the broken cap? 

[newfish]

Im wondering just purely out of curiosity how the OD side would sound if I just bridge the empty space with some solder?    Any ideas right off hand how an OD would sound minus the broken cap? 

I'd strongly advise against doing this.
Sure, 'Caps' are used to filter frequencies (shaving off harsh-sounding top-end, for example), but another important function is that they filter out DC voltage.

If you're at all unsure what function the missing Cap performed in the circuit, replace it with another one.

Some components (and most likely guitar pickups!) do not handle DC very well at all - hence the need to filter the DC off sometimes.

[jhanson25]

Replace it I shall!  Thanks so much!

[R.G.]

Hopefully R.G. will be along to identify it, but being a Visual Sound product, I guess it's probably a box-film cap.

You rang?

It's a box film cap, 0.022uF, J tolerance as noted. The 100V rating is entirely overkill; it's just hard to get film caps below 50V, 63V, or 100V. I like box films because they're not a different outline for every value. Makes layouts neater and appeals to my sense of esthetics.

Pretty much any 0.022uf film cap that fits there will work.

It's a bad idea to try just bridging it, as noted. Without knowing which cap it is, I can't guess at what would happen; maybe nothing, maybe ugly, nasty sound, maybe another part would get damaged.

That's an oddity. We don't get many caps breaking all on their own. Everything happens sometime, I guess.

All the good advice was already given before I got here.