Smallbear Ordering/Search Problems

[Guybrush]

Hey

It's quite possibly just me but does anyone else struggle with finding the components they need from Smallbear?

I'm trying to find some 25V box-caps in various values (1uf, 2,2nf, 100nf etc) but can't for the life of me find them. The search bar doesn't seem much help either.

Is their a knack to it or am I just being blind and daft?

Cheers!

[Haberdasher]

hey

the majority of box caps we use in pedal bulding with 5mm lead spacing come in 50, 63, or 100v, so i doubt you'll have much luck finding 25v there or anywhere else.
also, be aware that he uses the mf designation rather than uf I believe.  he sells the topmay brand.

try that

edit:  i think the ones you're looking for are listed under low voltage film on his site

[RobA]

Smallbear's site is a pain to find things on. You pretty much just have to go through all the pages in a section.

Your big issue trying to find what you are looking for though is that for the box type caps, the normal voltage rating is 63V and sometimes 50V.

Personally, I like the EPCOS caps from either Mouser or Avnet. Avnet usually has better prices. Though I'll buy the Topmay caps from Smallbear if I don't want to do a separate order from one of the other places and they do work well enough.

Edit: Beaten to the punch again. I wanted to leave in the suggestion of looking at Mouser and Avnet though. If you buy in just a bit of bulk, it is definitely worth getting the parts from them.

[billstein]

Is there anything wrong with the caps from Tayda? I find their site to be very easy to navigate.

[Guybrush]

Cheers guys.

I'm in the UK so have been trying to limit my order to just one site as the shipping charges mount up. I chose Smallbear over Tayda because it has the knobs I need for a build. Might have to bite the bullet and order from both places. 

I'm building the Faultline and the build doc says to use 25v caps or higher and all the build reports I've looked at use box caps. I guess people have just used the higher voltages you've mentioned.

Thanks!

[midwayfair]

I'm building the Faultline and the build doc says to use 25v caps or higher and all the build reports I've looked at use box caps. I guess people have just used the higher voltages you've mentioned.

They mean for the electrolytic caps, because the Faultline runs on 18V typically -- the box caps will always be "or higher."

[RobA]

If you haven't come across Banzai yet, they are a pretty good source for some of the harder to find effects related parts. http://www.banzaimusic.com.

Also, when I was in the UK, I was able to get some pretty good prices on some parts from Rapid,
http://www.rapidonline.com.

[Guybrush]

Thanks for the advice guys!

That makes more sense about the elctros!

I'd forgotten about Banzai. I'll have a look. Rapid is great but I find the site overwhelming. I'm not great with narrowing down what I'm looking for from the tons of results you get from a search. Maybe I should try and learn!

Cheers!

[croquet hoop]

Cheers guys.

I'm in the UK so have been trying to limit my order to just one site as the shipping charges mount up. I chose Smallbear over Tayda because it has the knobs I need for a build. Might have to bite the bullet and order from both places. 

Tayda's shipping fees are really low, chances are you'll pay less there (for shipping) than the additional shipping from adding a few caps on your smallbear cart.

[twin1965]

I'm in the UK and I order from several different places depending on what I'm building! They are all based in the UK or Germany. I have always had good service from all of them. Postage is reasonable and fast.

Try the following (some you may already know):

         http://www.musikding.de/index.php
         http://www.doctortweek.co.uk
         http://shop.pedalparts.co.uk/
         http://www.uk-electronic.de/onlineshop/index.php/
         http://www.banzaimusic.com/home.php (as mentioned).

You can also get some fantastic looking enclosures from ColesBD here in the forum.

[billstein]

Is there anything wrong with the caps from Tayda? I find their site to be very easy to navigate.

Just re-read this. Sounded a bit snippy like I was saying "What's your problem? Why don't you just order from Tayda? Their sites easy!"

What I meant was to ask everybody who was suggesting Mouser, Avnet and Smallbear for Epcos and Topmay, are the caps at Tayda any good? I've been purchasing from there because it is cheap and easy, but I don't want to buy things that aren't adequate.

[jkokura]

The only thing wrong with Tayda I've found so far is that much of the stuff that's cheap there and more pricey elsewhere isn't just inexpensive, it's pretty cheap in quality. Knobs for example.

However, I subscribe to the 'a cap is a cap is a cap' camp. I've done some testing, and I can't find any audible difference between brands, price, type or things like that. There's no reason not to buy the less expensive types for what we're doing.

All that said, I think the OP is wise to try and limit the places he orders from. You save no money by ordering less expensive parts and pay for two shipping costs. If you can get it all from one source, do it. Thus far, Smallbear is still the best one stop shop, with the caveat that you don't get much choice in some areas.

If shipping were free, we'd all be ordering each part of a build from different sources and have 16 orders come in. No one place is the best. All that said, I think that often Mouser is a great second choice, with Pedal Parts Plus being my favourite place to get enclosures. I also highly like Tayda for the prices on semiconductors and Passives when compared to Mouser or Smallbear.

But I don't live in Europe, but I do live in Canada, where we get rung out on shipping and customs fees and other things from ordering in the states too.

Jacob

[pickdropper]

While I generally agree with capacitance is capacitance, there are two types I don't buy from Tayda anymore.

- Ceramic Disc Caps - mostly because they generally don't spec which dielectric they use.  Ceramic caps can vary wildly with temperature and voltage.  These days I stick to X5/X7 or better.

- Electrolytic Caps- to be fair, this is paranoia more than anything.  I stick to name brand electros because cheap electros tend to fail over time and I want the least amount of problems in the future.

[RobA]

While I generally agree with capacitance is capacitance, there are two types I don't buy from Tayda anymore.

- Ceramic Disc Caps - mostly because they generally don't spec which dielectric they use.  Ceramic caps can vary wildly with temperature and voltage.  These days I stick to X5/X7 or better.

- Electrolytic Caps- to be fair, this is paranoia more than anything.  I stick to name brand electros because cheap electros tend to fail over time and I want the least amount of problems in the future.

I agree with both of these points. Also, I've done some measurements with different electrolytics in power supply boost and conversion circuits. Using good caps designed for the task, like the Nichicon PS and the Panasonic FR series gave a measurable difference (lower voltage loss and used less current). When you have to use an electrolytic in the audio path, moving up to reasonably priced electors that are designed for audio makes sense to me. There are reasons that even one company makes so many different types of electrolytic caps. There are a bunch of tradeoffs in their design.

In some filter circuits where the exact frequency is important, using a higher grade film cap makes sense. But for most situations, a film cap is a tim cap. I've only been able to hear the difference between film caps once. I put Orange Drops in my Les Paul once and it sounded so bad I had to replace them with cheap box caps within a week.

[Guybrush]

Thanks again to everyone!

Twin1965 - THose links are brilliant for UK pedal builders. Thank you!