Value Statistics

Background

I got idea for this little research when I prepared list of components to buy. I wanted to know which component values are most commonly used in pedals so I could get more of them and less of ones that are less likely to be used. So I made simple application that goes through layout gallery and counts all resistor and capacitor values. I used 130 projects of all pedal kinds: overdrives, boosters, fuzzes, octavers, compressors, wahs, etc.

Common resistor values

Common capacitor values

I hope this will help you next time you plan shopping for components 🙂

Comments
11 Responses to “Value Statistics”
  1. Maco says:

    Bro I’m just getting into this stuff and I’ve been looking for something like this.

  2. Jay Jay says:

    Awesome work. Very useful. Must have taken a long time.

  3. The Peddler says:

    VERY useful info!!! This saved me a lot of time from doing research to see which ones I have been using up the most. A great $$$ saver.

  4. Stephen says:

    Hi
    Great site.
    My question: Why do common components have such “strange” values. For example so many builds seem to need a 22microF cap. Why not round off to 20? Similarly with resistors. What is magical about 47K when a 50K will probably do the same job. Similarly with values like 4K7 or 0.47K when “5” seems to be a useful rounding off figure?

    • Bancika says:

      Interesting question 🙂

    • Andrew Ryder says:

      Because 22µF IS a common value – (20µF is NOT). Likewise 47K is a VERY common resistor, where you’d be hard pressed to find a 50K. Pots usually come in common decimal values (100K, 250K, 500K, etc.), but resistors and caps tend to follow either E12 (12 values per decade, at 10% tolerance) or E24 (24 values per decade at 5% tolerance) values. When values were first established, they designated the next “step” (value) in each decade (power of ten: i.e. ohms/10’s of ohms/100’s of ohms/Kohms/10’s of Kohms/etc.) as being 20% greater than the last, so that a 10% tolerance would cover all the values in between that value and the next (or the last).
      To wit:
      E12 values: 1.0,1.2, 1.5, 1.8, 2.2, 2.7, 3.3, 3.9, 4.7, 5.6, 6.8, 8.2 – each is approximately 20% greater than the last, hence these usually have a 10% tolerance (e.g. a 120Ω resistor can be anywhere from 108Ω to 132Ω, and the next one up, a 150Ω, can be anywhere from 135Ω to 165Ω, so the “gaps” are few and small)

      E24 values: 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.5, 1.6, 1.8, 2.0, 2.2, 2.4, 2.7, 3.0, 3.3, 3.6, 3.9, 4.3, 4.7, 5.1, 5.6, 6.2, 6.8, 7.5, 8.2, 9.1 – these are typically 5% tolerance, so each value is approx. 10% > the last. Again, for the same reason.

      See?

  5. garcho says:

    Bravo, thanks!

  6. jazbo8 says:

    How about the pots? Every box seems to have a few of them?
    Thanks!

  7. Jacob says:

    Maybe you could do one for electrolytic capacitors separate from others?

  8. Jacob says:

    Fantastic, I’d been looking for something like this, thanks so much!

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    The idea behind this site is to share my experience with Do It Yourself approach to guitars, amplifiers and pedals. Whether you want to save a couple of bucks by performing a mod or upgrade yourself instead of paying a tech, or want to build your own piece of gear from scratch, I'm sure you will find something interesting here. Also, this is the home of DIY Layout Creator, a free piece of software for drawing circuit layouts and schematics, written with DIY enthusiasts in mind.