Newbie capacitor question!

[Alaboogie]

Hey guys I literally just started soldering last night on a mb kingslayer board. I had ordered parts online and ordered all ceramic and electrolytic capacitors...but when the kingslayer board came in yesterday I realized that I needed to order film box capacitors for a couple of the joints. As I don't have non polarized caps and I don't wanna wait another 2 weeks to get more caps before finishing this project could someone tell me which way to put the polarity of the electrolytic caps relative to the pcb that madbean sends you and not the self etched ones? I love diy pcbs it's so much fun! And I love this forum I can see myself doing this instead of buying made pedals from now on...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[jkokura]

Can you give us specific capacitor numbers as to which ones you want to replace with the electrolytics? I imagine it's the 1uF caps, but with the numbers we can tell you which way on each one.

Jacob

[Alaboogie]

Well to be honest i need basically all the cap spots that aren't already marked for polarity/box caps and are not for ceramic values. I need

C1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 12, 13, 15, & 16

I had found a thread on here previously where someone had asked the same question, and you guys answered him but only regarding c9, c11, and c16. Oh and the way they described it was if he had a self etched board, not the board that madbean sends you. How could I discern positive and negative inputs for capacitors that aren't for electrolytics in case I run into this problem again? I tried googling but I didn't know what to search for...and i will definitely know next time to look at the board beforehand and order box caps

Thank you so much! Such an awesome resource!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[jimilee]

2 weeks? Where you ordering from???  if have a radioshack in town, they're good in a pinch. As far as etched vs fabbed, the boms are the same, just the physical placement on the board is different but c1=c1 on either and the values are the same. As far as how to tell,I don't know exactly but ground goes towards ground if that helps! Welcome aboard!!!

[RobA]

It can be difficult sometimes to figure out which way to orient a polarized cap, but what you need is for the negative side of the cap to always be more negative than the positive side. So, when you have a positive reference or bias voltage before a cap, then the positive side of the cap is oriented to face that bias voltage. The cap itself removes the DC bias voltage, so the other side is more negative -- unless a second bias voltage is applied after the cap, which is likely.

I haven't built a Kingslayer, but looking at the schematic, you are going to have issues using polarized caps. The circuit is referenced to ground, so the signal isn't biased up. The signals will always go both positive and negative around the caps on both sides of the cap. You really want to use film caps in this situation (or high grade ceramics).

[Alaboogie]

Just realized that I had the caps for majority of the list... sorry haha. But I am stumped because I need c5 which is a 390n but the biggest non polarized cap I have is a .1uf and the smallest electrolytic cap I have is a 1uf. I understand I can put the 1uf in place of the .39uf (it's okay if it sounds different) but I just need the polarity of spot c5...anyone? Pleeeeeease haha


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[wgc]

Pm your address, I'll mail one to you if you're in the states

[Gledison]

I dont know if my comment here is stupid, but for the polarized caps on fab boards, the positive pads are not square ones?

[RobA]

I dont know if my comment here is stupid, but for the polarized caps on fab boards, the positive pads are not square ones?

Yeah, they are normally indicated with the positive side being the square pad. But, the situation here was trying to figure out which way to orient a polarized cap on a PCB that called for a non-polarized cap, so there wouldn't be any indication on the PCB which orientation to go with.