madbeanpedals::forum

Hello,
I would like to build a Serendipity, I never built any pedal before.
I start to look around for components but there is so many kind of capacitors (ceramic, myca, polyester...) I don't know which to choose. Does it affect the sound?
And same problem with pots, linear or logarithmic?
Please help me.
Thanks

Quote from: Berni on May 30, 2010, 08:59:52 PM
Hello,
I would like to build a Serendipity, I never built any pedal before.
I start to look around for components but there is so many kind of capacitors (ceramic, myca, polyester...) I don't know which to choose. Does it affect the sound?
And same problem with pots, linear or logarithmic?
Please help me.
Thanks

Hey, welcome!  I was in the same boat you are right now about two months ago when I first embarked on this quest.  Lemme grab the .pdf for this pedal and I'll give ya a bit of guidance.  First thing though, take your time and pace yourself as you're learning all this stuff, otherwise you can end up ordering the wrong parts, wrong quantities, etc. 

Regarding caps: C1 thru C5 are low voltage poly film caps.  At Small Bear's store they divide up their caps by manufacturer as well as design.  I stuck primarily with the Panasonic film caps and the Topmay box caps depending on the values available, some you'll need the Panasonic, others you'll need Topmay.  A key feature of these poly film caps is you don't have to worry about polarity, unlike electrolytic caps. 

Caps C6 and C7 are electrolytic, you will have to worry about polarity: you'll want radial electrolytic caps, the two leads come out of one side together, and the longer lead is the positive lead.  I ended up with axial caps, the leads come out either end so I had to position them so they didn't short out against the enclosure.  Annoying.

Now to pots: the number is the value, and the capital letter at the end denotes the type of pot it is.  "A" refers to audio taper, "B" refers to linear taper, and "C" refers to reverse audio taper.  So your drive pot (500kB) would be a 500k linear pot, and the volume pot (100kA) is a 100K audio taper pot.  Make sense?

'Nother suggestion, keep searching around through the other posts on here, that's how I was able to answer a lot of the questions I had.  I eventually did come across a few issues I needed to ask about myself. 

If you're going through and still having trouble finding all the parts you need, PM me and I'll help you put together your cart.  We got your back, bro.

Here are a couple of random quotes from madbean that I copied & saved on my machine.  Sorry I don't have the links to the posts these came from.

On converting between uF and N:

Quote.1uF = 100n
.22uF = 220n
and .015uF = 15n

On which cap types for which values:

QuoteMetalized Film (box) for 1n - 470n, and for 1uF if appropriate
Ceramic for all pF values
Xicon High Temp or mini electrolytic caps.

One other thing.  When you are putting together a shopping cart, some of the sites such as ppp will reset your cart & leave you buggered.  I suggest using a firefox extension like screengrab to take a snapshot of your screen that you can save as jpg.

Hope that helps.

Thank you!!
So I will check again (I live in UK, it seems more difficult to find all component and impossible to find a good encloseure)

i built serendipity from your layout and it sounds very good! i used jrc4558 and 1n34a, waiting for ad712 and bat diodes to see is there gonna be any diference.

is there any way to squeeze a little bit more gain and how?

Quote from: Berni on May 31, 2010, 09:12:19 AM
Thank you!!
So I will check again (I live in UK, it seems more difficult to find all component and impossible to find a good encloseure)

Maplins do okay enclosures. It's the only thing I'll buy from them since they're so expensive. Also I just discovered Bowood electronics, who do 1590a type boxes - the tiny ones (golddust in the UK) and cheap too. They're Box002. But for your current project you'll need a bigger box Box003 or even Box 004.

Of course you'll still have to do the drilling yourself.

I have another question concerning the Serendipity pedal as well. As I have been putting together my parts list I came across a rather large selection of 2N7000 transistors at Mouser (http://mouser.com/Semiconductors/Transistors/Transistors-General-Purpose/MOSFET-Small-Signal/_/N-7h6fg?Keyword=2n7000&FS=True). So here's my question: What's the difference other than availability? Am I going to be OK using any of these in my Serendipity pedal?

THANKS!!

E

Personally, I use Fairchild. Most any would be fine. If you buy the ones that come from an ammo pack, or reel they will be significantly cheaper. Those are the ones that have the extra suffixes after the "2n7000".

Geberally speaking i go for better quality film caps
[ and the elna " audio " electrolytics from digikey ]
when signal is passing through the cap , and worry a little
less when it is shunting to ground .

After replacing elna's in a drawmer comp i have , the difference
was more noticable in making it less murky [ i never knew it was ! ]

Of course just like carbon resisters are sometimes desirable
so too maybe the " best " caps not always the best sound

Hi
I live in the u.k and the best place to buy your bits from is -www doctortweek.com
Fast delivery and cheap.

Quote from: nigel22 on September 13, 2011, 10:15:43 AM
Hi
I live in the u.k and the best place to buy your bits from is -www doctortweek.com
Fast delivery and cheap.

Agreed, great service and cheap!