Civic Crown OD

[wgc]

i haven't had cheap electros fail in pedals, but I haven't used many there.

I have experienced and seen more than a few failed consumer electronics where cheap electros failed.

Electrolytics in general aren't the most robust part, but there are differences between the better ones and the cheaper ones.  Can a cheap one be reliable?  Sure, of course they can.  But I tend to use elecros from proven manufacturers as a way of hedging my bets.

Others may choose differently and that is cool.  Everybody can choose for themselves what the acceptable level of risk is.

Agree with this, one prime example is on motherboards, and PC power supplies, though some of the failures may due to poor circuit design or under spec'ing parts. 

That said unless the cap in your pedal build is defective or you're running it 24-7 it will probably last quite a while.

Shipping costs aside, it makes a lot of sense to use nicer parts whenever you can.

[wgc]

Btw, nice builds, and good luck on the adoption!

[Bufferz]

Thanks!

[GrindCustoms]

Interesting circuit, would love to hear it.

I've built couple pedals with a jack/3PDT configuration similar to that before... if all of my pedals would have been in that configuration, the amount of pedals i could have fit on my board is crazy.

I'm also a picky bitch about components.

What you pay for when you buy higher quality components, is not only a better sounding or whatever parts... because, they will basically made with the same material but with slight difference in how the cap is sealed, thickness and quality of the leads.

What you are really paying for is consistency and quality control in their fabrication process.

Take the Chong electro for exemple... just spewing out numbers to make the exemple understandable. Let say they take out 1 cap every 100K caps produced to make a sample test. On the other hand take a Nichicon or Panasonic general purpose Electro where one cap is taken out of the production line at every 1K. Their quality control is much more tight to the spec the unit are suppose to show.

With the amount of components i've used so far and that at some point i was hoarding on Tayda box caps and electros, measuring everything before going into my production line setup.... i've withness many variation in their parts. For a filter cap... it does'nt matter that much that it's 105uf or 93uf.. it still filters and if you use a good PSU you'll never hear added noise.

But for caps going in LFO (Timing), in tone stacks (Frequency response), etcs...... the fluctuations in the component can become some thing you will hear. Because there's not just the cap value that moves, but also the tolerances of the resistors you are using. In certain audio filtering application when you're suppose to have a 100K and 100nf cap i.e.....  having a 93K and a 107nf cap changes the frequency you are dealing with.

Just my 2pf.

Sorry for derail.

Rej

[pickdropper]

Interesting circuit, would love to hear it.

I've built couple pedals with a jack/3PDT configuration similar to that before... if all of my pedals would have been in that configuration, the amount of pedals i could have fit on my board is crazy.

I'm also a picky bitch about components.

What you pay for when you buy higher quality components, is not only a better sounding or whatever parts... because, they will basically made with the same material but with slight difference in how the cap is sealed, thickness and quality of the leads.

What you are really paying for is consistency and quality control in their fabrication process.

Take the Chong electro for exemple... just spewing out numbers to make the exemple understandable. Let say they take out 1 cap every 100K caps produced to make a sample test. On the other hand take a Nichicon or Panasonic general purpose Electro where one cap is taken out of the production line at every 1K. Their quality control is much more tight to the spec the unit are suppose to show.

With the amount of components i've used so far and that at some point i was hoarding on Tayda box caps and electros, measuring everything before going into my production line setup.... i've withness many variation in their parts. For a filter cap... it does'nt matter that much that it's 105uf or 93uf.. it still filters and if you use a good PSU you'll never hear added noise.

But for caps going in LFO (Timing), in tone stacks (Frequency response), etcs...... the fluctuations in the component can become some thing you will hear. Because there's not just the cap value that moves, but also the tolerances of the resistors you are using. In certain audio filtering application when you're suppose to have a 100K and 100nf cap i.e.....  having a 93K and a 107nf cap changes the frequency you are dealing with.

Just my 2pf.

Sorry for derail.

Rej

What you are referring to is known in manufacturing as the AQL (Acceptable Quality Level).  There are many different ways of doing samples testing as a measure of quality control; commonly the testing is single sample our dual sample testing.  The AQL basically specifies how many you'll test out of a given lot size and how many failures (if any) are acceptable within a given sample. 

That is very useful when it isn't practical to test every single unit off the line.

But that is only part of the story as it doesn't address long-term reliability.  A good example is switches.  Manufacturer A might design a switch with an estimated life cycle of 5,000 actuations.  Manufacturer B might design a switch that has an estimated life cycle of 10,000 actuations.  They could both have a similar manufacturing yield (what would be found by the AQL) but most people would opt for the switch from Manufacturer B if it was:

1.) the same price or
2.) the cost of dealing with failures was higher than the added cost of the better switch

Of course, that's a very simplistic take.  There are many reasons why a manufacturer chooses one switch over another, but for this simplistic example it should be sufficient.

[sonarchotic]

Thanks for your input guys and sorry for the derail Bufferz. Good luck to you!

[davent]

Why do people sell themselves short and use questionable quality parts for their own builds but if it's for someone else they use the good stuff? There's not very much in many of the pedals being made so the total cost savings never mind the hassles can't add up to very much.

Good luck on the adoption... can be a very rocky road to travel! (I have an Ethiopian born niece.)
dave

[Bufferz]

Thanks, Ya - I have heard that can be the case. It's a very expensive road to travel...I do know that much so far. All in all it will cost about $25k - I am blessed that my employer will reimburse $10k after the adoption is finalized. We are about 5 months and $5k in so far. In case anyone is interested we have a blog to follow the process: www.theroadhome.in