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electrolytic instead of film?

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 2:28 am
by TheAttackman
so im building a wooly mammoth clone and i bought two 1uF and two 20uF electolictic film caps instead of two 10N and 20uF... will these still work... if so.. how should i orient them..
if not.. i have two .1uF trop fish caps... would subbing these in place of the 10n's (which arnt the same as .1uFs) work... im pretty sure that the 10N caps are input/output... so woulndt .1uF give me more fuzz (the more the merrier)????
Thanks :cry:

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 2:32 am
by william
paging mike....

build it how he tells you to. he built my mammoth clone and it rattles my drink off my amp at lowish volumes, if i want it to/let it.

best 100 dollars i ever spent, he defo knows what hes talking about.

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 2:40 am
by TheAttackman
its not mikes... some dude named madbean... the pcb is great
but its frikkin tiny.. way to squished...

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 4:16 am
by TheAttackman
Anyone???

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 5:18 am
by Mages
ok, well as far as I know the electrolytics will work you just have to make sure you orientate it to get the polarity correct. the long lead is positive. I would make sure you have the right value though. by 10N do you mean 10nf? that would be the same as .01uf so nah, the 1uf and .1uf ones are too big.

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 5:25 am
by TheAttackman
Ok.. + is in and - is out... I'll get to work tomorrow..

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 5:50 am
by Mages
nah, in and out is different. it's + and - in relation to the power supply.

mike has built a couple of these, he should be able to help you a lot more. and he knows tons about this stuff.

Re: electrolytic instead of film?

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 8:49 am
by Mike
TheAttackman wrote:so im building a wooly mammoth clone and i bought two 1uF and two 20uF electolictic film caps instead of two 10N and 20uF... will these still work... if so.. how should i orient them..
if not.. i have two .1uF trop fish caps... would subbing these in place of the 10n's (which arnt the same as .1uFs) work... im pretty sure that the 10N caps are input/output... so woulndt .1uF give me more fuzz (the more the merrier)????
Thanks :cry:
Nah, the 1uf (microFarad) capacitor you have bought instead of the 10nF cap is many orders of magnitude different in value.

1uF = 1x10-6F

10nF = 10x10-9F = 0.01uF

So your cap is 100 times too big. There are two 10nF caps used in the Woolly Mammoth, one in the tone stack (you really don't want to mess with that by 100 times the wrong value, the tone control will be useless) and the other is involved in the first transistor stage dumping some treble to ground to smooth out some harshness, if you use a 1uF here you'll dump too much signal to ground and the fuzz will be gutless and quiet. You need to get the correct values. Have some patience and built it correctly and you won't regret it.

The orientation of the electrolytics that ARE in the design should be marked on the board with the -ve (cathode) of the Capacitor having a square pad and the anode a circular one.

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 8:55 am
by timhulio
What schematic are you using? Best stick to the stated values for the input and output caps, or the frequency response of the circuit will be different and it won't sound like a wooly mammoth.

0.1uF = 100nF

You can't get 20uF film caps... or if you can they'd be huge.

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 8:57 am
by timhulio
Doh Mike got there first.

Like he said, buy the right caps. They cheap anyway.

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 8:58 am
by TheAttackman
It's ok I took out the 1uF and bought some .01uFs from PPP...
Jpoedully I get em before this weekend..

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 9:10 am
by Mike
Yeah Cheers then, Mike.

Next time I just won't fucking bother.

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 9:17 am
by TheAttackman
Thanks guys...

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 9:25 am
by timhulio
LOL