[sdiy] Curious capacitor in Music Easel ring modulator

[Aaron Lanterman]

Totally hypothetically speaking, suppose one was breadboarding the  
"balanced modulator" shown here:

http://rubidium.dyndns.org/~magnus/synths/companies/buchla/Buchla_2080_5_200.jpg

Should I - I mean, the hypothetical "one" - really put in C1, which is  
a 4.7 muF electrolytic cap? I see no particular reason to believe the  
voltage on one side of it would be consistently higher than the  
voltage on the other, which gives me pause and makes me wonder about  
it in the original circuit. (I've seen electrolytic caps like that in  
other Buchla stuff, where it looks like it's meant as a DC block, but  
I can't see any reason to assume one side would be higher voltage than  
another which feels dubious given that it's an electrolytic. I have  
heard that electrolytics can take a bit of AC action as long as the DC  
isn't going the wrong way, but that feels dubious too.)

- Aaron