REFERENCE GUIDE FOR PEDAL GEEKS

By Marius Boye Skaatan

Introduction

As a DIY pedal builder there is quite a lot of stuff to remember. I find

that I’m having problems remembering witch transistors is
interchangeable with others, what size drill bits to use when drilling
enclosures and how to read resistor and capacitor codes. I therefore
made this little guide for myself, so I don’t have to look this up at
Google every time I don’t remember a certain thing. I thought I should
share it with you guys, if anybody wants this. It’s still under
construction, so suggestions are welcome.

Have fun building!

 DRILL SIZES
Switches:

Footswitch Toggle switch Rotary switch

12mm 6mm 9mm

Audio Jacks:

Marshall style ¼” High quality ¼” Low quality ¼”

11mm 10mm 9mm

Headphone jack 3.5mm XLR Female XLM Male

6,5mm 22mm 19mm

Power:

DC jack isolated 2.1 mm Mains plug Fuse holder

13mm 20mm x 27,5mm 12,5 mm
 Potentiometers:

Alpha 16mm Alpha 24mm CTS Rev. log

7mm 8mm 9,5mm

Leds:

Led 5mm 5mm led mounting clip 5mm led reflector

5mm 6,5mm 8mm

Led 3mm 3mm led mounting clip 3mm led reflector

3mm 4,5mm 6mm
 Common transistors with pinouts

BJT

NPN PNP

PINOUT 1 PINOUT 2 PINOUT 3

Name NPN/PNP Pinout Hfe (Max-min)

2N3904 NPN 1 100-300
2N3906 PNP 1 100-300
2N4250 PNP 1 250-700
2N4401 NPN 1 100-300
2N4402 PNP 1 50-150
2N4403 PNP 1 100-300
2N5087 PNP 1 250-800
2N5088 NPN 1 300-900
2N5089 NPN 1 400-1200
2SA1015 PNP 3 70-400
2SC1815 NPN 3 70-700
BC549 NPN 2 420-800
BC550 NPN 2 420-800
BC559B PNP 1 180-460
BC559C PNP 1 380-800
BC560 C PNP 1 380-800
 DARLINGTON

NPN PNP

PINOUT 1

Name NPN/PNP Pinout Hfe (Max-Min)

BC516 PNP 1 30000-<
MPSA13 NPN 1 5000-<
MPSA14 NPN 1 10000-<
MPSA63 PNP 1 5000-<
 Mosfet

N-Channel P-Channel

PINOUT 1 PINOUT 2

Name N/P Channel Pinout

2N7000 N-Channel 2
BS170 N-Channel 1
BS250P P-Channel 1
 Jfet

PINOUT 1 PINOUT 2

Name N/P Channel Pinout

2N5457 N-Channel 1
2N5485 N-Channel 1
2SK117 N-Channel 2
2SK30A N-Channel 2
J201 N-Channel 1
MPFf102 N-Channel 1
NTE458 N-Channel 2

GERMANIUM
2SB22, 2SB175 and 2SB324 OC44 2N1303
 Reading resistor values

Resistor values are printed on the resistors with a colour code; witch is
made up by 4 coloured bands around the resistor. Some may even
have a fifth band, which tell you the quality of the transistor. I won’t
discuss this more in this article, but I thought I should mention it.

Identifying the bands:

Every resistor has one colour band separated from the others. This is
the tolerance band. Start by holding the resistor so that this band is on
the left side. You will then have three coloured bands, a little gap, and
finally the tolerance band.

1 2 3 4

The first two bands tell you the value of the resistor, while the third
band is the multiplier. The multiplier tells you how many zeroes to
tack on to the number from the first two bands. You will then have the
resistance in Ohm. The fourth band is, as mentioned earlier, the
tolerance rating.

Let’s use the resistor pictured above as an example. The first band is
red, and you look at the table below you will see that red equals 2. The
second band is black, witch equals 0.
As mentioned above, the first two bands indicate the resistance. In this
case we have 20, but we still don’t know if it’s ohm, kilo ohm or mega
ohm. This is what the third band will tell us. The third band on this
 resistor is orange, and from the table below you can see that orange
equals 3. That means we have to add 3 zeroes to the number we got
from the first two digits to get the resistance in ohms. That gives us
20 000 Ohm, witch equals 20KOhm.

The fourth band tells us the tolerance, and in this case it’s gold. Using
the table below, you’ll see that a gold band means that the resistor has
a tolerance of 5%.

The resistor pictured above is therefore a 20KOhm resistor with a 5%

tolerance rating.

Decoding the colour codes:

Colour 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
band
Tolerance 1% 2% 3% 4% 5% 10% 20%
Note that the colour for 5% tolerance is supposed to be gold, and that the
number for 10% is supposed to be silver.
 Reading capacitor values

Unipolar capacitors are normally labelled with a code, much like the
colour codes of resistors. Here is a guide to decode these codes.

The first three numbers in the code tells you the value of the capacitor
in pF, while the letter tells you the tolerance in percentage. The first
two numbers tell you the capacitance, while the third number tells you
how many zeros you should tack on to the two first digits.

Example1:

This capacitor is marked with

153J. As mentioned above, the two first digits give the value of
capitance; witch in this case is 15 pF.
The next number tells you how many zeroes you should add to the
value from the first two digits to get the capacitance in pF. In this case
it is 3, witch means you have to add 3 zeroes to the first two numbers.
That means that the total capacitance of this capacitor is 15000pF.

The letter at the end of the code gives you the tolerance of the
capacitor, and is based on this table:
Letter Value
B 0.1 pF
C 0.25 pF
D 0,5 pF
F 1%
G 2%
H 3%
J 5%
K 10 %
M 20 %
 15(Capacitance) 3(number of zeroes) J (tolerance)
15pF x 1000 5%
15000pF 5% = 15nF 5% = 0,015µF 5%

153J therefore means that the value of the capacitor is 0,015µF 5%.

Convert ion chart for capacitor codes and values.

pF - Picofarad nF - Nanofarad µF - Microfarad Code

1000 1.0 0.001 102
1500 1.5 0.0015 152
2200 2.2 0.0022 222
3300 3.3 0.0033 332
4700 4.7 0.0047 472
6800 6.8 0.0068 682
10000 10 0.01 103
15000 15 0.015 153
22000 22 0.022 223
33000 33 0.033 333
47000 47 0.047 473
68000 68 0.068 683
100000 100 0.1 104
150000 150 0.15 154
220000 220 0.22 224
330000 330 0.33 334
470000 470 0.47 474
680000 680 0.68 684