the tone cap police are lookin' fer you

I only like using the orange drops because people don't get mad when they see them and they're harder to break, it's nice if you can find them in bulk for cheap.

Other than that...couldn't care less about how a cap is made.

I'm only interested in PIO because I can probably make one.

I hear a good Plekking can make your cap get some decent transparent overdrive.

 

Seriously though, an oil filled cap in an oil finished guitar is humbucking, right?

 

I tried a Bumble Bee in my '68, it made a buzzing sound.

 

Only if you flip it around. The secret to the Peter Greenwood sound.

 

I don't have the capacity to understand all of this.

 

If your capacity is too low, your dielectric is too thick.

 

I wouldn't say that nothing else matters.

Was playing around with some of these

http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Xicon/23PS247/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMsh%2b1woXyUXj4Y2DIptcVSjnJUB/eDZBYw=

a while back and found several to be phenomenally microphonic. As in, you could hear your voice through the amp when you spoke into the control compartment, microphonic.

IOW condenser microphone microphonic.


Usually, nothing else matters...

 

I use orange drops because I have a source to get them for about 25 cents a pop.

I avoid ceramic disks because they are ugly and look cheap.

But it is true, for audio applications there is an insignificant difference between mylar, polystyrene, polypropylene and any of the other synthetic dialectic capacitors. I think the biggest difference with the oil saturated paper caps is that the rated capacitance tolerance is pretty high to begin with and that they will change as they age. So without a capacitance meter, who knows what that 40 year old capacitor's value really is.

But if you want to have fun, pick up a range of values from .018 to .068 and swap them one by one. When you hit that sweet spot, you will have a nice resonate circuit with those pickups, those pots and that capacitor. Then you can get that funky wah wah effect from your tone control on the guitar. If you want that sort of thing.

 

I would be devastated if someone, anyone, took a look inside the guts of any of my amps and told me that the caps looked cheap and ugly. Seriously, my life wouldn't be worth living if I got caught using a cheap, ugly looking cap.

 

Nothing beats the looks of capacitors, painted in pretty colors to identify their ratings. They are a pain to decode, but they are sure pretty.

But seriously, sometimes I throw stuff against the wall to see what bounces back.

I had a professor in college back in the late 70's who was giving a lecture about how various capacitors could change the waveform shape. Naturally, this led to a lab experiment.

The only ones that caused significant waveform change/distortion in the audio range were electrolytic and tantalum. All others caused negligible waveform change/distortion.

Once frequencies increased, that changed a little.

Tube technology requires a fairly high dielectric strength, so all the capacitor mfgrs built 400v and up caps. Along came solid state and the pcb. Lower voltages and small size changed how caps were designed and made. Small and cheap became the standard.

That is not to say small and cheap caps are bad. There is less than 1 volt in the typical guitar tone circuit. Putting a vintage .047uf 600v capacitor in there is a waste of $$ and space. But folks do it all the time.

I'm sticking to my 25 cent orange drops.

 

I flushed mine...then ran out the back door

 

Leo used whatever he could find that worked and was cheap; it didn't matter what the caps looked like. A .047µF cap is a .047µF cap... unless it's 20% over, in which case it's a .056µF cap.

 

you need a larger cap!

 

Gil Yaron (Preeb) made his own in one of his build threads.

 

I think its time this was stickied! Thanks Rob, love your straight ahead "no bs" way of explaining things!!!

 

Honestly Officer,, it's just a small baggie for personal use.....

please let me keep them.......

 

That's why they invented heat sinks.

All I do is take a pair of needle-nosed pliers and put a rubber band across the handles to hold the jaws shut. I put that on the cap wire between the cap body and the solder joint. No more overheating the cap.

Jim

 

Depends on what kind of oil you are using.

It has to be vintage 10-40 to work best.

Jim

 

Check this thread out.

http://www.tdpri.com/forum/just-pic...ay-my-hamel-std-b-died-wtf-am-i-gonna-do.html