Mangler - Substitution for 22uf polarized cap

[wbbrown]

Hi everyone,

So I'm building the Mangler from a purchased Madbean PCB, but had an ordering snafu.  Instead of a 22 uf electrolytic cap at C2, I ordered another 2.2 uf electrolytic.  I've ordered the correct cap, but while I wait a week for that to come, I have an extra 47 uf, and so I'm going to substitute that in.  Could I perhaps change the fuzz pot value to compensate somehow?  Or substitute a non-polarized cap at C2?  Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[jkokura]

In this case, I'm fairly certain that either the 47uF or any non polarized value you would substitute in that place might actually affect your sound. I'm not precisely certain of that of course, but I'm fairly sure. You could try it out of course, but in my case I'd just wait the week for the right part to show.

jacob

[mgwhit]

A 22uF cap bypassing an emitter resistor (which is essentially what we've got going on in Q2 and the Fuzz pot in the Fuzz Face) is pretty much large enough to boost most or all of the frequencies a guitar can produce.  My concern with going to a higher value, like 47uF, is that we might start going into frequencies that are so low we don't want to boost them.  I'm not really sure how to calculate the corner frequency here, so....

Luckily, I still have a Fuzz Face on one of my breadboards.  I just swapped in a 47uF cap and -- playing at fairly low volume since my son is asleep upstairs -- could not tell the difference.  I'll try it tomorrow morning at higher volume, but I think you can probably put it in temporarily or otherwise with no significant effect.

[mgwhit]

Cranked it up a bit this morning and thought it sounded fine with the 47uF cap.  I couldn't tell the difference with the 22uF.

[wbbrown]

Thanks everyone!