[sdiy] Looking for 1uF NPO Cap...

[asfi at eol.ca]

On Wed, 21 Apr 2004, Henry Till wrote:

> Hey Guys,
>
> Just started building one of my first synth-diy
> projects: Ray Wilson's Sound Lab Mini Synth.
>
> So far so good, but the schematics call for a 1uF NPO
> ceramic cap right in front of the the output jack.
> Having a tough time trying to find this thing, as
> Digikey and Mouser don't seem to have them (except one
> in mouser that requires a min. order of 500).  Just as
> the Harry Bissell's (great!) Field Guide says, usually
> these things seem to be in the picofarad range.  Does
> anyone know where I can find something of this sort?
> Is there a good swap that I might be able to find
> easily?  Would I want to swap such a part, or is
> better to stick to a ceramic NPO in this case?

For a DC blocking capacitor, there's no reason to impose such tight
tolerances on it. I'd say that a regular X7R would do just fine.

I'm betting that what Ray was trying to specify was "non-polarised"
and not the tight NP0 temperature spec.

- Colin Hinz
  Toronto, Canada

PS: Lately I've been spending a good percentage of my workday
preparing BOMs (that's "Bills of Material") for a major project
with just over 2000 components in total -- and too damned many
of them are capacitors. I now know much more about capacitor
part numbers (as in the gazillion-character alphanumeric jumbles
the manufacturers use) than I ever wanted to.............. :=(