1N4148(ST) opinions

[jimpajohn]

I just purchased some 1N4148(ST) off of ebay. (Chinese special) I tried swapping these for some stock 1N4148 in the clipping section of my OD pedal. They sounded woofy and sputtery. Has anyone else had the same experience with Chinese ST diodes? I assumed that a 1N4148 was standard across board. 

[brett]

Hi
You're right - 1N4148s are almost identical, regardless of origin.
It is unlikely that "woofy and spluttery" is due to a healthy 1N4148. It sounds more like a tonal (woofy) or biasing issue (spluttery), or maybe a 'cooked' diode or power supply issue.
Like transistors, diodes are easily melted when soldering, so do it as quickly as possible.
cheers 

[Earthscum]

Have you checked the forward voltage, and just for the heck of it see if it conducts in reverse. I cooked one, like Brett said how to, and had the same sound from a DS-1 breadboard project. I ended up rebuilding the whole thing after about an hour of swapping stuff and cussing. Found the diode (which I had pulled from an attempted rotary diode selector, so had longer leads... should've just snipped them). It was showing a forward voltage of about .4or so, and just out of curiosity I checked the reverse and it read that it was conducting at about 3.5V. I found another and everything worked just fine.

If you got a batch of bad diodes, I wonder if they got x-rayed or something during shipping? I don't know what electronics do in the presence of scanning radiations, or if that's even a concern. Just a thought.