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I am pretty newbie to all of this, but I am building some pedals and saw a pedal that is said to need a electrolytic capacitor.. But I only have ceramic capacitors at the moment..

So is there any noticable difference? Or will it work?

If you have an ceramic cap in the >1uF range, you MUST take a picture and post it here haha.

I think I have some mylar 1uf. I just ordered "100 1uf caps, as cheap as possible" from 4site.

I will have a look at it tomorrow, I don't guess those caps I have are some rarity

it depends on the application. post a schematic!

Toonster wrote:I will have a look at it tomorrow, I don't guess those caps I have are some rarity

I have never seen ceramic caps bigger than 1uF and most applications for electrolytic caps are 1uf-100uF. In most pedals electrolytics are used for power supply filtering, sometimes for stage coupling, maybe filtering.

most electrolytics are polarized too so you wouldn't want to sub a non polarized ceramic cap when a polarized electrolytic is called for.

eniacmike wrote:most electrolytics are polarized too so you wouldn't want to sub a non polarized ceramic cap when a polarized electrolytic is called for.

though sometimes schematics call for electros in the signal path when they don't necessarily need to be that type.
what pedals are you building?

Just for the sake of being annoying... 2.2uF Ceramics! http://www.futurlec.com/CapCerMono.shtml Bottom of the page... Multilayer isn't cheating.

But yes, This:-

smallsnd/bigsnd wrote:it depends on the application. post a schematic!

&

smallsnd/bigsnd wrote:

eniacmike wrote:most electrolytics are polarized too so you wouldn't want to sub a non polarized ceramic cap when a polarized electrolytic is called for.

though sometimes schematics call for electros in the signal path when they don't necessarily need to be that type.
what pedals are you building?

smallsnd/bigsnd wrote:

eniacmike wrote:most electrolytics are polarized too so you wouldn't want to sub a non polarized ceramic cap when a polarized electrolytic is called for.

though sometimes schematics call for electros in the signal path when they don't necessarily need to be that type.
what pedals are you building?

I said most, not all.

you might not NEED polarized caps for coupling but there is no point in keeping them on hand when you can use either or. I have built hundreds of pedals and I think I only used non polarized electrolytics once and it was probably either before I bought 1uf box caps or one of soulsonics projects like the crackle not okay.

tons of pedals use electros for coupling like foxx tone machines, fuzz factorys, rats (in the dual rc network), bazz fuss etc.

eniacmike wrote:

Toonster wrote:I will have a look at it tomorrow, I don't guess those caps I have are some rarity

I have never seen ceramic caps bigger than 1uF and most applications for electrolytic caps are 1uf-100uF. In most pedals electrolytics are used for power supply filtering, sometimes for stage coupling, maybe filtering.

most electrolytics are polarized too so you wouldn't want to sub a non polarized ceramic cap when a polarized electrolytic is called for.

just wondering in what situation a polarized cap would actually be preferred? and in what situation a non polarized substituion would degrade performance?

multi_s wrote:

eniacmike wrote:

Toonster wrote:I will have a look at it tomorrow, I don't guess those caps I have are some rarity

I have never seen ceramic caps bigger than 1uF and most applications for electrolytic caps are 1uf-100uF. In most pedals electrolytics are used for power supply filtering, sometimes for stage coupling, maybe filtering.

most electrolytics are polarized too so you wouldn't want to sub a non polarized ceramic cap when a polarized electrolytic is called for.

just wondering in what situation a polarized cap would actually be preferred? and in what situation a non polarized substituion would degrade performance?

Generally if you have a cap going from a supply line + voltage to ground you want to use polarized caps. These are used to Supply large current demands, and are commonly found in power supply filtering portions of pedals.

The only reason to use bipolar electrolytics is in high frequency situations (GHz not guitar signals.) generally speaking polarized caps are smaller and cheaper than their non polarized equivalents.

Sometimes I get 1uF NP electros for cheap. They're awesome used throughout a Muff. Plus it looks cool.

I saw what I did wrong today, I made a mistake with ordering, screwing up some symbols

But thanks for the responses people!

I always thought polarity on capacitors was just because the cap would break. Maybe not, but I'm pretty sure that, other than frequency and microphonic characteristics, capacitors were pretty well interchangeable between types, and you just had to make sure polarized caps were put in correctly.