"greenie" caps disadvantages????

[Brian Marshall]

Ok, so they are small, fairly cheap.   Anyone have any opinions on them?

bad experiences?

I am trying to build stuff smaller, and polypropylene caps get huge once you go over .1uf.  

So what does everyone think?

[petemoore]

I Can Tell you for certain I use them all the time, and have not yet been able to attribute any problems as such to failure of 'greenies'.
 I've salvaged more greenies than I've bought new.
 Are they sonically deficient? Possibly in a rare position, with Everything else totally optimized, you could discern between...put some 'fancie' [more expensive types] in a position that a schematic calls for them, and see if you can tell any difference.
 All this I've written is from what I've read and experienced.
 It could be that 'fancie caps are closer tolerance. That should be phrazed as a question.
 I love those greenies, I hope no-one ever has something bad to say of them that I should listen to...I find them extremely consistant, from one .01uf to the next to the next, they seem to cut frequencies more precisely than my ears could discern a difference.
 In certain positions, like between stage filtering, I believe some report that differences could be heard. I would think one 'good' [not great...] cable would dwarf any difference between a greenie and a fancie...

[Fret Wire]

I've never messed with those, but the Panasonic ECQ-V series are real small, even the 1.0mf caps. They're the ones you always see Keeley use. Digikey has them. Try searching under P4675-nd (1mf), and check the data sheets and photo's.

http://www.digikey.com/

http://www.maco.panasonic.co.jp/www-data/pdf/ABD0000/ABD0000CE8.pdf

[Peter Snowberg]

I like 'em in the audio path.

My ears are so fried, that might not mean much. I think they have high ESL which is only a fault in power supply decoupling but in audio they sound just fine. They do seem to have their own tonal influence, but it's one I like.

In terms of price/performance ratio.... they're great for me!

Take care,
-Peter

[Brian Marshall]

well i was working on a new overdrive, and i really want to fit it in a 1590b box, but there are 10 caps on it, and one is a .22 uf cap.   i built it on bread board with mostly greenie caps, just because i had them.  it seems a little noisey, but it is pretty highgain device, so i guess that is expected when unshielded.

i think i'll box it up tonight with the greenies, and see what happens.

Brian

[GuitarLord5000]

I bought some .1 uf films caps from Colin a while back.  While they're not "greenies", they work very nicely and are EXTREMELY small when compared to "greenie" .1's.  Seriously, they are barely larger than my 5.1 V zener diodes.  Heck, maybe they're not even THAT big!  They'd be nice for building small.  The lead spacing on them is only .1 inch, allowing them to fit nicely in any two side-by-side holes on perfboard.  If you utilize a lot of .1's in your circuit, these'll definately help you make it smaller.

[Brian Marshall]

I'm not interested in getting a bunch of one value.  i need consistancy.  greenies have been arround a while, and that is sort of important to me.

that size kind of makes me wonder what kind of cap it is.... tanalium???

[aron]

I don't care what anyone says (you know who you are hehehehe).

I love them and rely on their sound for most of my pedals.

[R.G.]

The typical "greenie" cap is epoxy dipped metalized mylar (polyester).

It's a really, really good compromise between the competing criteria of  cost, availability, quality, and size.

I bought some .1 uf films caps from Colin a while back. While they're not "greenies", they work very nicely and are EXTREMELY small when compared to "greenie" .1's. Seriously, they are barely larger than my 5.1 V zener diodes. Heck, maybe they're not even THAT big! They'd be nice for building small. The lead spacing on them is only .1 inch, allowing them to fit nicely in any two side-by-side holes on perfboard. If you utilize a lot of .1's in your circuit, these'll definately help you make it smaller.

Those are high-dielectric ceramic. They are optimized for most capacitance per unit volume. They are good - but there is a cadre of people who claim they can hear a grainy sound from them. This may or may not be important in a device with over 100% THD. They make GREAT local power supply bypass devices, but I try not to use them in signal paths.  You might make different choices. That particular ceramic drifts a lot with temperature and has a wider tolerance, so they're not good choices for precise filter setting.

well i was working on a new overdrive, and i really want to fit it in a 1590b box, but there are 10 caps on it, and one is a .22 uf cap.

You have a couple of choices.
(a) use ceramic. The graininess may not bother you.
(b) use tantalum. Some people like this, and two of them are used in the TS808 and TS9. Try to make there be a polarizing DC voltage across them if you do use tantalum.
(c) re-scale the impedances so that you can use a smaller capacitance value. For example the rolloff of a 10K/0.22uF is f=1/(2*pi*10K*2.2e-7)= 72 Hz (if I got the decimal point right). If you can scale the 10K up to 100K, you can use a 0.022 cap and get the same 72 Hz rolloff. Sometimes this is practical, sometimes not.

[Brian Marshall]

i dont want to use ceramic... my luck with ceramic caps has not been good.

unfortunately i am performing jfet voodoo,  and dont think i can do anything else to make this cap any smaller with out drastically altering the tone.

i think i can make it fit though.

[Ge_Whiz]

Are you talking about the dark green 'gumdrop' capacitors? I used them in my bass/treble crossover filter because they had a much better tolerance range than other types - +/-10% instead of -20% +80%. The filter sounds great, but are we talking about the same caps?

[Peter Snowberg]

Here's a picture:


In the real world they're green and not black. I suspect this was just a low light photo.

I get them from http://www.circuitspecialists.com/

Take care,
-Peter

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

A crazy thing, is that these "greencaps" are often BROWN! it's a real  mind$%#@ seeing all these brown caps arrive with an invoice for "greencaps"  :shock:  I get thru a lot in my resonant filters.

[Fret Wire]

Here's a picture:

Thanks Pete, I thought everybody was talking about those translucent green caps like you see in a TS-9 and others.  :oops:  :oops:  :oops: ! Couldn't figure out why everybody was raving about those! I use the greenies all the time. Can't beat the price. I still use the Panasonic ECQ-V's for .1uf to 1uf where size is critical. An ECQ-V 1uf is smaller (half the height and slighty wider) than a greenie .01uf.

http://www.circuitspecialists.com/level.itml/icOid/957

BTW, Circuit Specialists are doing another LED blowout:
http://www.circuitspecialists.com/level.itml/icOid/7074

[bwanasonic]

I like the small box-shaped foil caps I get from http://www.banzaieffects.com/parts/caps.htm  



I'm not sure who has these in the US, but ordering from Olaf is easy and cheap, so I haven't looked too hard. They have won the tone test in all my rather limited and unscientific experiments. Someone posted about WIMA caps a while back. Never tried those, but 'sposed to be good and compact. Used plenty of Rat Shack generic *greenies* without any sonic catastrophes, but they just aren't *cool* :wink:

Kerry M

[Adam Shame]

Here's a picture:


In the real world they're green and not black. I suspect this was just a low light photo.

I get them from http://www.circuitspecialists.com/

Take care,
-Peter

I have a bunch of these, but they are red... are they the same thing?

[Peter Snowberg]

I have a bunch of these, but they are red... are they the same thing?

It depends on who made them. Xicon makes several series but the greenies are the cheapest of the bunch. I have some Matsushita foil caps that are a sort of reddish brown with the leads exiting perpendicular to the body. These are probably the next step up in quality because they attach the plates to the leads at every turn of the polyester. That lowers the ESL and ESR quite a bit and makes them good for power applications. They sound a little "different" but the change is very very small and I can only hear it in some circuits when A/B testing. For the absolute majority of pedal uses, there's probably no practical difference.

For decoupling purposes, the caps that are connected to the leads at every turn are the clear winner. You can judge that on a scope.

For anybody that's wondering.... I couldn't give a rodent's buttock about 2% silver solder . I'm not a tone nut and I have a hard time hearing differences in lots of A/B comparisons, but I do hear subtle differences between some components (match the basic values on a meter before testing). The more expensive part may not always sound better.

Fret Wire,
I've had lots of caps over the years including the translucent caps that are of the same construction (or just about the same) as the greenies. I'm guessing these may be the same as you're talking about? I dunno, but I've had them in yellow, white, and green. They (at least some of them) come from a company called "NIS", but I don't know anything more about them. Sometimes the logo on these units is a little N with a circle around it, sometimes they say NIS on the side. They sound the same as greenies to me and I could never tell 'em apart in A/B testing.

... a flowery bouquet with a hint of oak...

Kerry,
Thanks for the heads-up on those caps. They do look cool!

Take care,
-Peter

[Dai H.]

i don't think I've ever heard the greenies sound bad, in efx. at least--maybe a bit diff. compared to other film caps sometimes. One time in an amp though, I had a bunch of 2200pFs on a rotary sw., and a hi-volt greenie from mouser sounded the worst, after I figured out which one that was. I had thought initially that it might sound good being a cheap sort of cap and not the fancy hi-fi type, but go figure. BTW,  I thought they were not metallized, but are they?

[Ansil]

i use these myself, when i go all new caps.  but i have alot of surplus from a friend who got out of diy-ing so i bought him out.

i love these little caps.. although for most prototyping i used salvaged caps they are orange .. not orange drops but still orange andmy old faithful big blue, ratshack special 1mfd.

i can't find one that sounds as mellow as that one. i use it in all my 1mfd circuits i could care less about the packaging i am more about the tone.

but for my ears the green ones don't sound that much different to warrant a change from any other caps i have.  other than ceramics which i detest.

my other fav is my 2200pf silvermica.

but i tend to use the same type and values on a lot of circuits..

[GuitarLord5000]

I picked up some caps from Kemet that were smaller than "greenies", but which were of the same "type".  i.e. Polyester Metal Film.  They weren't as small as my ceramics from Colin, but they were considerably smaller that the greenies from Rat Shack.  They're pretty cool.  School Bus Yellow!  They look real nice on a circuit (especially one with yellow Tants in it), and sound nice as well.  However, this is coming from one of the few people (apparently) on this forum who actually like the sound of cheap-o ceramic caps.