Chauffeur - 1N5222B sourcing/substitutes?

[Joben Magooch]

Just a quick question. I'm wanting to put together the Chauffeur drive and it requires 4 1N5222B diodes. The only place I can find them is places like Mouser or Digikey, but I've already got all the other components ready to order from Tayda and as best I can tell Mouser's cheapest shipping is like $8 bucks, which isn't a lot, but feels kind of silly for $1.50 worth of diodes.

I'm not having much luck finding anything else (but of course I will fully admit that I may have missed something painfully obvious) that matches the exact specs; would anyone happen to know of a reasonable substitute that I might be able to find at Tayda? It looks like there are a few sellers on Ebay/Amazon who are selling small quantities for a decent price (I don't think you'd really have to worry about fakes of a seemingly not-rare diode, no? )

That said: I understand it's a 1/2 watt, 2.5V Zener. Tayda *does* have 1N5221B (1/2W, 2.4V) and 1N5223B (1/2W, 2.7V) which I assume might be close enough (given a +/- 5% voltage tolerance) but I wasn't sure if it was particularly critical in this application that it's 2.5V. Admittedly, my understanding of these things is fairly limited, but I'd be curious to hear your input and if you have any recommendations as to which to use. Thank you!

 

[Joben Magooch]

I would add also - in hopes of learning something new - I haven't seen the schematic, so I don't even know if these are used as clipping diodes (I didn't think Zeners were commonly used in that application but I'm just guessing, honestly), but I was under the impression that with clipping diodes a change in the voltage would perhaps alter the headroom/clipping threshold? In that way, I would think that IF that were the case and IF this circuit does get some clipping from the 1N5222B's then I would think the slightly higher voltage one (1N5223B) would perhaps raise the clipping threshold a bit whereas the 1N5221B would then lower it?

But, like I said - just a shot in the dark here, just trying to talk/think it out and hopefully learn something. At the moment I feel like I'm in the "knows just enough to be dangerous" phase.

Thanks again.