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Capacitor polarity?

Posted: 09 Mar 2014, 23:51
by DieterVDW
Hi,

I soldered together a Big Muff clone based on the design and ready-to-build kit from Musikding.de .
It ain't working yet though...

What I was wondering: some of the film capacitors (aka the whitish boxy things) are marked with a dot, and the schematics also clearly mark a + side on the board.
By the power of deduction I conclude these things must have some kind of polarity. Looking at the current way I soldered this, I've probably screwed this up.

My questions:
- Am I correct in concluding these things have polarity? I'm reading some mixed opinions on that ...
- Which polarity does the dot mark?
- Some capacitors have no dot -> no polarity?
- Will using the capacitors with reverse polarity have fried them?

Schematic (copyright Musikding): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/414 ... schalt.pdf

Crappy phone-cam picture of the board:
Image

Re: Capacitor polarity?

Posted: 10 Mar 2014, 03:41
by Intripped
no film-capacitor has polarity and the dot isn't a polarity marker, it is part of the marking that indicates the value toghether with other characteristics of that capacitor:

take the marking on those caps: .1k63
.1 stands for 0.1 uF (100nF) - the first "0" is omitted in the marking
k indicates the tolerance of the cap' value (k=+/-10%)
63 tells you the max voltage for the cap, in this case 63V (volts)

google for capacitor code, you'll find many other things

...so probably something else is wrong with your circuit: maybe one of the wires that you soldered under the board is shorting somewhere?