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Officer Bukowski wrote:Also, you should stock up on like 1n, 10n, 22n, 47n, and especially 100n caps. You'll be using a lot of them

About this... what's the difference between polyester film capacitors and ceramic disk capacitors? I am seeing them both for some of these values.

Totally unrelated to this thread, but anybody listen to stripes music? Excellent voice.

Very nice.

No functional difference, they'll just affect signal slightly differently. I swapped the tone caps out in a guitar recently and bought some of each kind at each value and tried them all until I found a sound that I liked. For a passive tone control anyway. Not sure if there's a difference in other types of circuits (though I don't think there is.)

And yeah! Stripes makes the good jams!

Cap type is a highly debated topic that still has no real answer, you either beleive expensive caps affect the tone or you don't.

IMO a cap is a cap (which is true, if a cap is the right labelled value and either non-polarized or polarized depending on its job, it will work fine) and while perhaps at higher voltages in tube amps you may hear some differences between types at 9V in a stompbox, you wont so I use what's cheap and easy to get hold of, usually mylar film although I used to use ceramics when I bought from suppliers without.

An issue that arises with cap switching regards tone difference is people neglect to measure the exact value, caps can be up to 20+/-% tollerance so your 100nF Cap could be 80nF or 120nF, which might mean you hear a difference. True some of the more expensive caps are tighter in tollerance but that's a judgement call, I accept that all parts will have some variation and i'm not going to sit and measure every part I put in a box to get it exactly right, it would be a waste of my time (who says the designer did? the values on a schematic could have been different to what his parts said on them and actually measured) so I find it only important where tollerance is necessary (clock caps etc) which isn't in fuzzes etc really.

So basically, if it was me, i'd just buy whatever cap met the value you need, if you wanna spend a little more, you could move to mylars or even box caps but I certainly wouldn't waste exotic (silver mica etc) and oversized amp caps in a pedal, however if you feel you'd prefer your pedal to look a little more interesting inside or that you think you can hear a difference (maybe my ears are shot... but I doubt an audience is gunna notice my pedal has a ceramic cap rather than one 5-100x the price) you can spend that extra money, personally I wouldn't bother though.

Okay, that makes me feel much better. I'm sure I will have more questions soon. I just ordered a TGD kit... Excited cause I'm having a hard time doing stuff from scratch or getting overwhelmed with info on the net. I just wanna make a pedal and feel good about that first!

Also THANKS GUYS for the music compliments!!

Okay question about this pcb that I'm soldering right now... It's the rangemaster clone from madbean.

http://www.madbeanpedals.com/projects/Rangemaster/Rangemaster.pdf

On the pcb there are circles and squares where the components go in... are the squares where I would put the positive legs in? Like on C5, does the positive end of the electrolytic cap go into the square?

stripes wrote: On the pcb there are circles and squares where the components go in... are the squares where I would put the positive legs in? Like on C5, does the positive end of the electrolytic cap go into the square?

Yip, that's right. Square pads usually mean pin 1, +ve leg of an led/cap.

is there a way to make a pedal without a bypass switch?

stripes wrote:is there a way to make a pedal without a bypass switch?

Absolutely. Just take the input jack's tip and run it into the effect's input. Do the same with the outputs.
It's really as simple as that.

SO guys I built that madbean rangemaster clone and it works ONLY when I complete the circuit with my fingers. I have to hold one finger on the tip of the input jack and the other on the output. Putting it in an enclosure doesn't solve the problem.



I know my soldering sucks

think you're missing a ground connection on the output. Normally it will work like that if you're jack shorts gnd to the enclosure but maybe they're not quite connecting?

If you can, check that you have your output wire connected to the tip. Some of the stereo jacks are reversed, so that may be the problem.

yep, that's all wired... still only getting a signal to pass through when I complete the circuit with my fingers..

It looks like the back of the pot is touching the underside of the board. If it is, that would definitely prevent it from working.

Do you get any sound in bypass?