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Can I change the capacitance of an Electro with parallel/series?

Started by elenore19, August 03, 2017, 06:30:43 PM

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elenore19

I combine all sorts of non polarized capacitors to achieve the values that I need, but right now I need an electro that I don't have and I'm wondering if they work the same as with non-polarized.

So I'm looking for 22uf electro cap. I have plenty of 47's so I was planning on just putting 2 in series with the same direction polarity. Does this work? Or is there another way I can make this happen?
Thanks for the help.

-Elliot

sonnyboy27

That should work. Like you said, just make sure they have the same direction polarity and you should be fine.

i.e.
  +- +-
--|(--|(--

midwayfair

Actually, if you put like-to-like polarity you get a non-polarized capacitor, which is generally better, especially if the cap is handling any sort of AC duties (read: audio passes through it).

However, there are very few uses where using a second electrolytic cap should be necessary. If it's anything audio related, a 47uF is likely to do the same job as the 22uF, and if it's something like an LFO (though 22uF is rarely used for that), you should be able to change one or two resistors instead. So you can probably just roll with the 47uF, but it's hard to say without knowing what you're working on ... which you didn't tell us.