20% Tolerance on Electrolytic Caps is Okay, Right?

Caldo71

Caldo71

Active member
I think I know the answer to that (it’s “yes”?) but I wanted to ask.

I just notice in general that when I order parts—no matter if it’s Mouser, or somewhere more “boutique-ey” like Tayda or Small Bear—it’s virtually impossible to find radial electrolytic caps with listed tolerances of under 20%.

Whereas by comparison, with film caps etc, it’s easy to keep tolerances under 2.5% most of the time when shopping.

Is that “okay” because the role of an electrolytic cap somehow does not affect the “tone” of a stomp box, and/or is somehow not part of the audio chain?

I’m still really new to “theory and signal flow” in this world, so I’m pretty clueless regarding the above.
 
I am in the habit of measuring every part before installing them and it seems rare to me to find one that is actually that far off. Most I've had are fairly consistent, at least within the same batch. Pots are where the largest swings tend to be IME.

I was really picky with my first few pedals, but eventually I was going to be wasting parts, so I started using the handful of "rejects" I'd found and they all work fine.
 
A big part of circuit design is factoring in component tolerances. Typically, you'll see electrolytic capacitors used as power filtering for ripple and RF frequencies as well as decoupling. Whenever they're used in the audio path, if you calculate the filter corner frequencies, the +/-20% should not have an appreciable impact on the signal. Usually this means that the filtering affects frequencies outside of the human audible range. If a circuit isn't well designed and a part with a large tolerance is put in a place where precision matters, that speaks to a larger design flaw.
 
benny_profane said:
A big part of circuit design is factoring in component tolerances. Typically, you'll see electrolytic capacitors used as power filtering for ripple and RF frequencies as well as decoupling. Whenever they're used in the audio path, if you calculate the filter corner frequencies, the +/-20% should not have an appreciable impact on the signal. Usually this means that the filtering affects frequencies outside of the human audible range. If a circuit isn't well designed and a part with a large tolerance is put in a place where precision matters, that speaks to a larger design flaw.
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I always use tant caps in the signal line and the ones from Tayda are 10%. I think I read that @Chuck D. Bones said he does that somewhere, and I feel like if I'm going to steal ideas from someone he's better than most! I don't think it has to do with the better tolerance, though. They seem to do a great job for me but I've never done a comparison.
 
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