Bitsbox Kits

[beardy80]

Hey guys,
Just wondering, I'm pretty new to building effects and have been collecting a few components together.
I'm just after a bit of advice really, I notice in the components section on this site that Ceramic Discs aren't favourable above 500pf  "Ceramic discs: +Super cheap, cheaper than resistors. -Produce unwanted noise. -Unnatural sound, I'd use these for some non-critical purposes with values below 500pF"
But in the bitsbox kits they seem to supply them up to 10nf, in the Klon kit for example there is a 2.2nf and a 3.9nf ceramic disc. Is there a reason for this? Should I buy ceramic discs for my builds or stick with poly boxes or mylar caps?
Thanks in advance,
Rich

[GoranP]

Honestly, having built a few dozen boxes, I've never ever used a ceramic disc cap. Polyboxes are great until they become too big. Having used up most of my wima stash I've been using greenies and multilayer ceramics and honestly haven't heard a difference.

Metalized poly films are also great as they don't increase in size much with capacity.

[Madferret]

Goran's right about the greenies and multilayer ceramics, they sound very close to polyboxes. Bitsbox do a Multilayer ceramic starter kit that's fairly reasonable and should get you all the popular values.

[IvIark]

Bitsbox have selected the caps for the builds entirely based on pitch, so they will offer ceramics for instances where the cap only has a 2.5mm separation between leads.   There's nothing wrong with using ceramics, but if you want to try something else then it's always a good idea to have a few parts in stock anyway so you could potentially mod the kit from the standard layout if you want to.

Box caps are also great for a 2.5mm pitch by just bending one of the legs back and then out again so there is only an (approx) 2.5mm separation instead of 5mm.

[PStevenson]

ceramic capacitors are fine. capacitance is capacitance especially at such low frequencies.
try and stay out of the "mojo" sector of pedal building because it honestly doesn't sound different unless the value is slightly different or you're getting a placebo effect + you end up spending lots of money that could go on a nice DMM or loads more components.

you just have to make sure you don't crack them when you handle them because that can make them microphonic

[beardy80]

Thanks for all the advice guys!
It's much appreciated :)