If you are asking about the ripple on your raw supply to the front end of the regulator, you should get around 10% ripple (more or less), from a full-wave bridge with a capacitor equal to at least the "critical" capacitance. With a 60 Hz input, that's around 1000uF per amp of load. Any good linear regulator circuit should easily cancel out that much ripple. You can actually end up with less than 0.1% p-p ripple on the output, with a 723-based linear regulator, and proper compensation. IMHO, 250,000uF of capacitance (4 1F caps in series) won't buy you much more than a single 1000uF electrolytic cap will at the current you're running - but it will buy you an enormous inrush current at turn-on - and maybe nuisance tripping of your input fuse or circuit breaker. As a couple of quick notes; you can expect around 15 VDC raw rectified output from a 12 VRMS transformer running through a FWB rectifier using a capacitor filter - but bear in mind that transformer manufacturers design for full-load output. This means that you should plan for higher raw voltage at light loads, and rate your components accordingly. With commercial transformers, regulation can vary widely. At only 40 degrees C temperature rise, this can mean up to 50% regulation (higher no-load voltage), if the manufacturer has gotten aggressive with his design margins. Best to test the transformer on the bench before making any assumptions. You should allow around 3 VDC compliance for your regulator (15 VDC raw voltage for a 12 VDC regulated output). Hope this helps.
