Capacitors... Whats up with those?

[AntKnee]

Hello. I'm a noob. I've built a few pedal kits, and I am wanting to build one from scratch with a madbean pcb. I was looking at the bill of materials and I can easily find everything except the capacitors. The bill of materials lists the farad values but there is much more to it than that. So many different ones out there. How do you know which to use?

[jkokura]

Great question! I'm going to be moving this to the Beginner's section because it's going to be helpful for some others.

Cap's a big subject. What you're looking for are:
1-999 pF - Generally we get Ceramic Caps. Sometimes you can find film caps in this range, but you're good with small ceramic caps. Get pin spacings of either 2.54 or 5mm.

1nF-1uF - Film caps. We like to use box film caps. You can also get chicklet style caps, but film caps are pretty common and easy to find. You shoudl be looking for pin spacings of 5mm, and voltages of 25-100V.

1uF-220uF - You will be looking at Aluminum Electrolytic capacitors, radial, of a diameter of 5mm where possible, and 6.3mm for 100uF and higher.

Best place to get them? Well, there's easy places like Smallbear and Tayda, but there's also complicated places that sometimes have good deals in bulk, like Mouser.

Jacob