[sdiy] Where to buy ceramic caps

[mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca]

On Fri, 29 Dec 2017, rsdio at audiobanshee.com wrote:
> Except that after you’ve gone to all of this trouble to sort capacitors
> into “within 1%” and “not within 1%” piles, you’ll find that the
> manufacturer has already sorted them the same way and sold all of the
> “within 1%” caps to someone willing to pay more. There will be a gap in
> your measured values, such that the 5% caps will all be >+1% or <-1% but
> none between -1% and +1%. If the capacitor technology includes 1%, 5%,

That depends how many people are willing to pay the premium for the
more-precise caps.  If there aren't so many such people, then it may make
sense for the manufacturer to sell some caps that could qualify as 1%
under the 5% label just because there are a lot of those and many of them
otherwise couldn't be sold at all.  Bell curves mean that if almost all
caps are within 5% then a pretty large fraction of the caps manufactured
will also be within 1%; but it's not necessarily true (and in fact, is
probably false) that the demand for caps sold as 1% and caps sold as 5% is
in the same proportion.

-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                 People before principles.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/