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DIY Stompboxes => Building your own stompbox => Topic started by: darron on March 26, 2007, 09:22:06 AM

Title: please tell me about my tropical fish capacitors?
Post by: darron on March 26, 2007, 09:22:06 AM
in a jaycar store today i found these amongst the greencaps:

(http://members.optushome.com.au/bluespherecreations/forum/tropical-fish-capacitors.jpg)

they were labeled as 0.12uF/120nF but i don't think that's right? they look pretty so i bought 30 of them for $4.50 (AU) with two schottky diodes.

could someone please tell me what they are? should i jump into shoving them into my vox wah for mojo? actually, no, pretend i didn't just open a discussion for the mojo effect of these. i'd only use them to look cool! anything practical that i can do with them that comes to mind?
Title: Re: please tell me about my tropical fish capacitors?
Post by: MetalUpYerEye on March 26, 2007, 09:30:06 AM
Hmm.. Practical uses..

You could eat them.
or..
Glue them around the steering wheel of your car for a more "colorful" ride!

Ok.. Not funny. In all seriousness, you need to figure out their values before you can do anything with them. GOOOOOGLE it!
Title: Re: please tell me about my tropical fish capacitors?
Post by: darron on March 26, 2007, 09:35:54 AM
Quote from: MetalUpYerEye on March 26, 2007, 09:30:06 AM
Hmm.. Practical uses..

You could eat them.
or..
Glue them around the steering wheel of your car for a more "colorful" ride!

Ok.. Not funny. In all seriousness, you need to figure out their values before you can do anything with them. GOOOOOGLE it!

my girlfriend did suggest that they look like lollies (candy)

i googled, and for the online conversions things they never worked since the colours didn't fall into place properly. i was hoping someone might pop out and say "that's just the xxuf cap i've been looking for.

take this calculator for example.. it works fine till you try to place the last colours

http://www.csgnetwork.com/capcctantcalc.html (http://www.csgnetwork.com/capcctantcalc.html)
Title: Re: please tell me about my tropical fish capacitors?
Post by: ulysses on March 26, 2007, 09:39:25 AM
they are 120nf colour coded caps

they are not the ones needed for the vox wah

cheers
ulysses
Title: Re: please tell me about my tropical fish capacitors?
Post by: darron on March 26, 2007, 09:44:56 AM
Quote from: ulysses on March 26, 2007, 09:39:25 AM
they are 120nf colour coded caps

they are not the ones needed for the vox wah

cheers
ulysses

thanks ulysses. i got 120nf on one of the sites but i wanted it confirmed. (:
Title: Re: please tell me about my tropical fish capacitors?
Post by: petemoore on March 26, 2007, 09:46:25 AM
  If they're super stumping me, because I have no way to measure, I do a comparator test, against known values in a FF, at the very least this will place the decimal point, if you can't tell a .22uf from a .1uf...what's the difference anyway..
Title: Re: please tell me about my tropical fish capacitors?
Post by: alderbody on March 26, 2007, 09:48:09 AM
Quote from: darron on March 26, 2007, 09:22:06 AM
should i jump into shoving them into my vox wah for mojo?

if they are .12uF you need two of them in parallel to get to the .22uF area (tolerances included...)

but there are several projects that call for such value caps.



Title: Re: please tell me about my tropical fish capacitors?
Post by: zjokka on March 26, 2007, 11:03:46 AM
I have a bunch of them, and my experience is that their tolerance is much wider than newer caps.
You might find anything etween 100nF and 150nF, if you have a DMM that measures capacitance.
It's really a good idea if you work with old caps.

but they sure look good. ;D