[sdiy] Curious capacitor in Music Easel ring modulator

[Dave Manley]

Aaron Lanterman wrote:
> 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.)
The currents and voltages are so low in this example does it really 
matter?  Is there a voltage threshold that must be exceeded before 
reverse polarity on an electrolytic cap becomes an issue?

-Dave

P.S. hypothetically speaking how does this circuit perform in 
your^H^H^H^H^H^H?