Newbie question : caps choice

[doletal]

Hello madbeaners folks,

I am Doletal (from France), an usual reader of this excellent forum.

I am now in the process to build these little boxes by myself but as a newbie, I have many many questions.
Liustucru (Have you seen his SS2 ? It makes me crazy... ) already answered (very paaaaatiently  ) to a lot of them but I am now ordering and I am stuck by the caps...there is already a discussion concerning these but I am still lost.

I understood that for values above 1 uF, I have to choose polarized caps and the advise from Liustucru was to choose Panasonic FC.
But below these values...within the pF, nF range...silver-mica, ceramic or film foil ? And which space ? 2.5 or 5 mm ?

I was also thinking about the wires...stranded or not ? It seems it does not care...many use 24 gauge stranded ones...so I will go with that.

ThanX !

Doletal/

[croquet hoop]

A search on the forum will give you more details & explanations, but in short :

1-1000 pF : use ceramic caps, either cheap ceramic discs or MLCC caps (multi-layer ceramics), 2.5mm or 5mm spacing, just bend the legs if needed
1 nF - 1 uF : film/box caps, 5mm spacing
1 uF and above : electro caps, there are many good brands/types, use Panasonic KA/KS for short caps (5-7mm high), otherwise brand does not matter that much, these caps are not going to be in the signal path anyway, so they won't really affect the sound.

For 1 uF caps in the signal path, most prefer to use film caps (which are bigger than electro caps at this value), MLCC or tantalum caps. Tants are polarized (so, watch the orientation when installing them), the two other are not.

When a specitif build requires something less common such as silver mica, it will be stated in the build documentation, but as a newbie you don't really need to stock them and wonder where you're gonna use them.

Stranded wire is less rigid, so it won't stay in place as well as solid wire, but it won't break under pressure. 24 awg stranded is indeed a safe choice for pretty much everything.

[doletal]

Zanx it is very clear !

D