Best place to order resistors?

[Stickman393]

Pic shows a 1/4w KOA Speer 1% metal film on top and an Amazon job on the bottom

Actually, scratch my previous post. I wasn't thinking of Yaegos, I was thinking of KOA speers. Ya just jogged my memory.

Yaegos and Royal Ohms are about even in my book. I'll generally start my search on mouser with Vishay RN55's or CMF55s. Cuz I'm fancy like that.

But if those are more than 15 cents a pop in quantities over 100, then I go with Koa Speers.

 

[JTEX]

I don't know where you guys find resistors for as much as $0.15 apiece in qty 100. I wouldn't pay more than $0.03 apiece unless they're like 0.1% tolerance and I actually need that.

https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Through-Hole-Resistors_YAGEO-MF0207FTE52-100K_C513592.html
https://www.mouser.ca/ProductDetail...GAEpiMZZMsPqMdJzcrNwiweiCzxKzWLEX%2BmghBl5Fc=

 

[Stickman393]

Is it needlessly expensive? Absolutely.

But rn55s and cmf55s don't make ya muck around with color codes. The value is printed directly on the resistor.

Which, I'll tell ya what...is super helpful for folks that are color blind.

Not that I am. But I like to cosplay as someone who is, because it allows me to spend more on resistors

 

[JTEX]

Oh, those are deluxe resistors. I like using them if somebody else bought them.

 

[Stickman393]

Oh, those are deluxe resistors. I like using them if somebody else bought them.

Thus why every dollar I own is stolen.

Makes for a better life.

 

[Bilansley]

For vintage amplifiers or pedals where carbon resistors are required to keep the mojo working, I use Antique Electronic Supply. Be aware that these are truly 10% or 20% tolerances, and are often higher resistance than marked.

This is what I feel is what the consideration should be when deciding on resistors. Ofc if you don't think or don't care about the correctness aspect of staying true to the orininal that its a moot point. It really all about the context of your objective in building the pedal! I personally really enjoy the collector aspect of finding neat vintage parts and then using them in an old school circuit. It's part of the magic for me and makes me happy.

Also it is common knowledge that when you use the exact part number from the original schematic, the resting state quantum energy of the mojons (the fundamental particle responsible for the mojo field which directly interacts with audio signals and amplifies their goodness) is much higher than if you were to sub the part for something un-cool and modern.

Jokes aside I actually DO feel that the looser tolerances on vintage circuits like a FF all add to the charm of the pedal. But to each their own.

My personal ideology on the matter for what it's worth is use modern 1% metal film on most builds. I am looking for thick, resilient leads, cost effectiveness, and resistors whole color scheme is consistent from value to value (That is KOA Speer from Mouser). The last bit is ridiculous and I realize that, but I have OCD and anxiety and its genuinely stresses me out when builds are not symmetrical and color matching

 

[jdduffield]

Should I stock up on the green caps or the red? Which is better? How do they compare?

 

[Stickman393]

As far as CC's go...little tips.

Thems fuckers be hygroscopic. Moisture tends to make them drift high. Get yoself some desiccant packets to put in your little baggies or containers that you store those things in.

Some folks even bake CC's at low temps (as low as your particular oven can go) in order to dehydrate them and get them back within spec.

Honestly, the best way to go about this would be to use a vacuum pump and vacuum chamber. Draw the chamber as low as you can, let 'er run for a while, and the water will vaporize and be pulled out of the chamber.

As far as the caps go...depends. Most of what you'll find on tayda is polyester. Mylar. Those work well enough for most purposes.

Are they the best you can get? Not by a long shot. But they work.

More important will be lead spacing. PedalPCB projects use 5mm lead spacing for the majority of film and ceramic caps.

 

[Ginsly]

Should I stock up on the green caps or the red? Which is better? How do they compare?

Funny, I’ve never gotten a straight answer about how they differ. It seems that both are polyester mylar caps, but greenies are "film and foil" whereas the red ones are "metallized film”. The red ones seem to be generally smaller (and a bit more expensive than) greenies, but some of that may depend on the voltage rating.

Most go for box film over either one of those for nf values, though.

 

[jdduffield]

Funny, I’ve never gotten a straight answer about how they differ. It seems that both are polyester mylar caps, but greenies are "film and foil" whereas the red ones are "metallized film”. The red ones seem to be generally smaller (and a bit more expensive than) greenies, but some of that may depend on the voltage rating.

Most go for box film over either one of those for nf values, though.

I know from past threads that people like those box film ones since they fit nicely in place on the board. I have a decent amount of those, but sadly I had ordered them from Amazon. I’m not sure if they sound great as there isn’t anything around to compare them to. I’m still building my inventory of parts. Is it possible for two different capacitors that have the same type (box film), same value, and same measurement to still sound completely different?

I’ve been watching a lot of Short Circuit episodes of JHS and the resounding theme from Josh Scott (whom I respect very much) basically saying the parts from Amazon are fine. However, in practice I’ve noticed that isn’t the case for mono jacks or potentiometers. I was surprised to find the potentiometers were getting easily destroyed by the heat of the heat gun when shrinking wiring nearby whereas the ones from Tayda did not. I also noticed that the same circuit from StewMac (Ghost Drive) sounds better than my Kliche Mini, but I suspect it has to do with some of those Amazon parts. (Not sure which ones. Could be the caps or resistors. I’ve thoroughly tested various diodes in the circuit and it isn’t those.)

Anyway, I’m building my inventory and dropping hundreds of dollars so want to make good choices. I’m trying to purchase an array of parts so I can be creative breadboarding but then have parts ready to build a batch of 20+ or so whenever I stumble upon something I like.

As a follow up: I ended up getting the resistors from Tayda instead of Amazon. For the caps, I ended up getting BOTH red and greenies (also from Tayda). It will be interesting to see if I can tell a difference. I figured it might be nice to have some inexpensive greenies around for one off experiments or situations where I need a value I don’t have in another form. I plan on trying some of those other venders in the future, especially if I start making a job out of it. Digikey prices aren’t bad at all if you order 1k units.

 

[jessenator]

There are some books out there that go into lots of detail about the filling (dielectric), and I'm no engineer. I'm still working my way through it all, so someone correct me, but this is what I've distilled so far:

The green chiclet ones are like a step above orange ceramic discs.

The polypropylene (burnt umber blob) Panasonic ones are good all rounders of you can find them.

The quality of other poly box caps depends on the manufacturer, with Wima being the darling.

Multilayer monolithic ceramic guys depend on the type (I'm not doing the terminology right)—the various alphanumeric designators, in our diy layman terms, will tell how noisy they'll be.

Silver mica caps are excellent, low noise options for the pF range, if you don't want to bother with hunting down the right mlcc cap, but they're pricy.

Also, where they are in the circuit matters. E.g. no need to shell out for lower noise caps in the power filtering, but it's a good idea to use them in the signal path.

That's a huge oversimplification.

There's a book called "Picking Capacitors," that I need to work my way though. It's specifically for audio applications.

I've thing I've been asking myself is when this is all necessary. Am I going to be populating a dirtbox with Wimas? Or are ceramic disc caps going to be fine, just like they were in 1980-whatever?

My gut says, for modulation, reverb, that stuff would benefit from s cleaner signal. But like a fuzz or a Rat? Is it necessary? Or are we popping the red box caps for builder cred? Building for builders?

 

[jdduffield]

with Wima being the darling

I almost bought some of those but it was going to limit the number of inventory units I could purchase by quite a lot. They were 40 cents each on Tyda. Maybe someday I’ll upgrade to Wima or just order to the build when necessary. But today, I only had $600 to work with and was trying to fully stock resistors, caps, and diodes, getting 100 of each value. I think I did pretty good. Got a lot of parts to keep me busy for awhile. I’ll check out that cap book.

One point of confusion for me that I think will clear up soon is that I hear about power vs signal path. I always thought that the way you amplify a signal is by mixing the super low voltage (created by the copper and magnets when the strings are played) with the circuits higher voltage created by the 9v power and transistor or op amp that magnifies that signal. But I hear the phrase “keep your audio signal path and your power separate” quite a lot.

 

[jdduffield]

Am I going to be populating a dirtbox with Wimas?

Good point. Kinda like also,… if I build a LoFi pedal, why would I use HiFi parts?

I mean, I guess it could be like with recording when you track in a super deadened room so you can control the reverb to a T. Like having a perfect environment as the spring board to build from. But, I agree, if the end result has lots of noise anyway, why spend the money using low noise parts? Who knows, maybe it would even add to the effect in a good way.

 

[Stickman393]

Oh noes, it's mojo parts!!

Well...eh...I'm a strange one in this area. Do I believe that parts choice will really make an difference? Mostly...no. unless we're talking about something where the capacitor is being used in a filtering circuit: certain ceramic caps can have wide fluctuations in value depending on temperature. It's the sort of thing where something might sound great at home in a climate controlled room...but go onstage with the sun beating down on your pedalboard and it could be a whole different thing.

Do I obsessively choose components based on what I think will perform best in the application, even if said performance isn't actually improved and I'm just being neurotic? Also, yes.

Generally speaking: resistors aren't going to make much of a difference. Cheap, expensive, resistors are easy to manufacture and their noise characteristics are so negligible with both metal and carbon film that it's doubtful that you'll be able to notice a difference between them that isn't based on value.

Capacitors can be different. It all depends on the dielectric, or the insulating material between the capacitor's plates. This has a big impact on the size of the capacitor, as well as it's characteristics.

The hierarchy kinda goes like this:

Teflon- fantastic. Also, super fucking expensive. Best saved for critical values subjected to harsh environments and high temperatures. Overkill for pedals.

Polystyrene: about as good as one can hope to put in a pedal. Tend to be large as value increases, easily damaged by heat, best saved for spots where you really need a cap with low dielectric absorption and precise value.

Polypropylene: lower dielectric constant makes these larger than poly/mylar/etc. They're a step below styrene in terms of dielectric absorption from what I've read, but are still quite good. Generally, you can get anything up to 22-47nf or so in similar packages to polyester, but larger values take up a lot of space.

Polycarbonate and PPS: PPS has been taking the place of polycarbonate in recent decades. Polycarbonate was used often for its high temperature stability. Higher dielectric constant than polypro, you can get up to a 100nf value in these in a fairly small package.

C0G: also known as NP0. MLCCs with very tight temperature coefficients. Physically larger than the same MLCCs in something like an X7R, but still quite compact. Great choice for values where a polypro would be too large. They get expensive at larger values though.

Polyester: the workhorse of pedals. Most builders don't really go beyond these, because they work well enough for our purposes. They're small, cheap, and reasonably good at what they do. Personally, I stay away from them, because I enjoy the feeling of superiority I get when I look at folks with disgust for using perfectly serviceable capacitors.

X7R: good MLCCs for power filtration duty. In fact, they're superior to C0G when used in high speed circuits as SMD bypass caps due to their small footprint, where parasitic inductance is a concern. Which is to say: in circumstances that don't tend to be present in the pedals we build. You can get these in quite small packages for the values. Small size in microfarad values? Yup. It's possible.

Everything has its pros and cons. Expense, footprint, characteristics. And that doesn't even get into electrolytics, tantalums, mica, and polymers.

Also, keep in mind, im bluffing my way through this write-up and I know very little about the ins and outs about how these actually behave in circuits aside from some buzz words that I only tangentially know the meanings of. See my bit on polyester caps.

 

[Ginsly]

The polypropylene (burnt umber blob) Panasonic ones are good all rounders of you can find them.

Is that what these red ones are - polypropylene? I thought they might be two different types of polyester - film-and-foil (green) and metallized (red). I have some random red caps and I don't really understand why they are SO much smaller than their green counterparts at high values - both 100v. I generally use box film but I actually do like these red ones too. Would love to get some more - that Panasonic ECQ series is gone, so not sure what a good sub would be.

I also had a question about ceramics - let's say I have some MLCCs and I don't know what dielectric they are - C0G or X7R. I assume there's no process of testing/measuring in order to figure that out? I have some random blue MLCCs (don't look like TDK), but have no idea what they are!

@Stickman393 you also know your caps, curious what you think!

 

[JTEX]

Ceramic caps bigger than about 22nF are almost certainly not C0G. If they were surface mount, it would be easy to tell. SMD C0G are a greyish white, while X*R are more yellowish.

I suppose you could put a cap in a meter and heat it with a heat gun or iron or something. Or freeze it with a quick spray of Freeze Mist. If the capacitance varies significantly, it's not C0G.

 

[andrewsrea]

This is what I feel is what the consideration should be when deciding on resistors. Ofc if you don't think or don't care about the correctness aspect of staying true to the orininal that its a moot point. It really all about the context of your objective in building the pedal! I personally really enjoy the collector aspect of finding neat vintage parts and then using them in an old school circuit. It's part of the magic for me and makes me happy.

Also it is common knowledge that when you use the exact part number from the original schematic, the resting state quantum energy of the mojons (the fundamental particle responsible for the mojo field which directly interacts with audio signals and amplifies their goodness) is much higher than if you were to sub the part for something un-cool and modern.

Jokes aside I actually DO feel that the looser tolerances on vintage circuits like a FF all add to the charm of the pedal. But to each their own.

My personal ideology on the matter for what it's worth is use modern 1% metal film on most builds. I am looking for thick, resilient leads, cost effectiveness, and resistors whole color scheme is consistent from value to value (That is KOA Speer from Mouser). The last bit is ridiculous and I realize that, but I have OCD and anxiety and its genuinely stresses me out when builds are not symmetrical and color matching

I wanted to give you a 'thumbs-up' emoji and a 'Lol' emoji at the same time!

FWIW: I have a client who I do amp, pickup and pedal work for who is also an OCD gunsmith. He keeps me on my toes, right down to label placement!

 

[CheapSuitG]

I have been watching short circuit as well, fun show.

Just ordered a bunch of greenies to breadboard with to use instead of my box caps. 2 cents a piece, if I fry them or break a leg, that is fine vs 40 cents each for the wimas.

For breadboarding, I don't think it makes a big difference, but on a PCB I personally like to use the box capacitors. They fit well and are a little less noisy.

That said, greenies look cooler and that is really where the TOAN comes from, how cool it looks.

Tayda is great for resistors as well but I have switched over the Yageo because they come in bulk, not tape and in QTY 100 they fit much better in my storage bins.

I know from past threads that people like those box film ones since they fit nicely in place on the board. I have a decent amount of those, but sadly I had ordered them from Amazon. I’m not sure if they sound great as there isn’t anything around to compare them to. I’m still building my inventory of parts. Is it possible for two different capacitors that have the same type (box film), same value, and same measurement to still sound completely different?

I’ve been watching a lot of Short Circuit episodes of JHS and the resounding theme from Josh Scott (whom I respect very much) basically saying the parts from Amazon are fine. However, in practice I’ve noticed that isn’t the case for mono jacks or potentiometers. I was surprised to find the potentiometers were getting easily destroyed by the heat of the heat gun when shrinking wiring nearby whereas the ones from Tayda did not. I also noticed that the same circuit from StewMac (Ghost Drive) sounds better than my Kliche Mini, but I suspect it has to do with some of those Amazon parts. (Not sure which ones. Could be the caps or resistors. I’ve thoroughly tested various diodes in the circuit and it isn’t those.)

Anyway, I’m building my inventory and dropping hundreds of dollars so want to make good choices. I’m trying to purchase an array of parts so I can be creative breadboarding but then have parts ready to build a batch of 20+ or so whenever I stumble upon something I like.

As a follow up: I ended up getting the resistors from Tayda instead of Amazon. For the caps, I ended up getting BOTH red and greenies (also from Tayda). It will be interesting to see if I can tell a difference. I figured it might be nice to have some inexpensive greenies around for one off experiments or situations where I need a value I don’t have in another form. I plan on trying some of those other venders in the future, especially if I start making a job out of it. Digikey prices aren’t bad at all if you order 1k units.

 

[Stickman393]

Ceramic caps bigger than about 22nF are almost certainly not C0G. If they were surface mount, it would be easy to tell. SMD C0G are a greyish white, while X*R are more yellowish.

I suppose you could put a cap in a meter and heat it with a heat gun or iron or something. Or freeze it with a quick spray of Freeze Mist. If the capacitance varies significantly, it's not C0G.

Actually, that first bit hasn't been true for some time now. I use 100nf C0G caps that I source from mouser all the time.

I've got em as big as 220nF, but those are a hair under a dollar a pop. Much larger than X7Rs, but the 100nFs are very manageable. I tend to use those in place of polyester. Unless 22nF is a typo. To which I say: haha! I have pointed out a mistype in your message. Now hang thy head in shame! I know, for I certainly don't ever mistype and then go back and edit hurriedly in the hopes that nobody noticed. Nope. Not a butt.

The test described is a good one: the primary differences between ceramic classes have to do with temperature coefficients: that is, how much the capacitance varies with temperature. C0G will stay relatively stable: that's what they're designed to do. X7Rs are like, +/-15% or something like that. Z5Us change their values based on their current mood.

As to each of the caps: greenies are generally polyester/mylar/whatever name folks wanna give em. The burgundy/brownish red caps can be *either* polyester or polypropylene. The best way to know would be to make more of the manufacturer's product code and look up the datasheet.

Tayda's selection of polypropylene and C0G caps is pretty limited, IIRC. Honestly: they're perfectly serviceable. Workhorses. Probably not worth a second thought. Use to your hearts content until you get to a circuit with a sample & hold function...at which case you'll get better performance with something like polypropylene or (even better) polystyrene.

And I say that because A) it's true and B) so I can continue to laugh at mere mortals that use polyester caps in their builds like perfectly rational beings.

 

[JTEX]

Actually, that first bit hasn't been true for some time now. I use 100nf C0G caps that I source from mouser all the time.

I've got em as big as 220nF, but those are a hair under a dollar a pop. Much larger than X7Rs, but the 100nFs are very manageable. I tend to use those in place of polyester. Unless 22nF is a typo. To which I say: haha! I have pointed out a mistype in your message. Now hang thy head in shame! I know, for I certainly don't ever mistype and then go back and edit hurriedly in the hopes that nobody noticed. Nope. Not a butt.

I think of SMD by default. Biggest SMD C0G I've seen in 0805 is 47nF, but this was a few years ago. I guess they're making them bigger now? Good to know.