Am I missing something??

[5thumbs]

2 months ago I repaired a Musicman amp that had a bad filter cap. It was an original Mallory 20uf 450VDC axial leads under a cap can on top of the amp. Someone in the past had replaced the 2 40uf Mallorys with Spragues leaving the 2-20uf Mallorys. Since I use Sprague and had one in stock, I replaced the bad Mallory (physical damage...one axial lead broke off at the body) with an equivalent Sprague 20uf 500v. I also went through the amp and redressed some wiring and shielded some wiring that someone had added to connect reverb to both channels. Anyway, the guy warned me that he was a "Tone Freak" and was really particular about his amp. So he shows up at my shop yesterday with a 20 year old Mallory 20uf 450V Vertical Can type capacitor he had just bought on eBay and said ever since I changed the cap to a Sprague, his amp didn't sound "right". So I wanted to say to the guy if he was such a tone freak, why was he playing a solid state tone circuit! ha! But I didn't. I took out the Sprague and figured out a way to mount the can cap on it's side next to the cap can and ran leads into the fiberboard connections. Of course now he thought it sounded much better! ;-) Did the Mallory really make any difference or do you think it was the wiring redress and shielding? Or was this guy off his meds! ;-) This guy had Monster Cable to his speakers, wanted me to only use silver coated hook up wire, certain screws in the back of his combo, etc. And all of this on a Musicman! Am I way off base or are a lot of these guitarist drinking the KoolAid? (think Mercury Magnetics)

[guitarmike2107]

I think that few guitarists would be that pernickity

but I would have called myself a tone freak when I spent hours in front of my peavey transtube trying to get the magik out of it. I am allot less fussy now thank goodness

[Steve Conner]

Anyone who buys a vintage electrolytic is off his meds. It's like buying vintage tires for your car, or a NOS tuna steak.

Just be grateful he didn't want his output transformer rewound with Monster cable. Yes, there's about a mile of plain old magnet wire in there, in the signal path.

I believe that 90% of the tone comes from the player, and the equipment just needs to tick a few boxes that are well understood and have scientific explanations.

Having said that, electrolytics are known to dry out with age and develop high ESR, which can alter the tone of an amp. It is technically a fault, but some people like it. I've heard tales of amp techs who had to add resistors in series with the new caps to "age" them.

[Chuck H]

Anyone who buys a vintage electrolytic is off his meds. It's like buying vintage tires for your car, or a NOS tuna steak.

LOL... Seriously, I did LOL. MMMmmm... Vintage fish. Thank you for this.

Having said that, electrolytics are known to dry out with age and develop high ESR, which can alter the tone of an amp. It is technically a fault, but some people like it. I've heard tales of amp techs who had to add resistors in series with the new caps to "age" them.

Right. It's a little understood phenomenon so it chalks up to "mojo". But, since all sorts of things can be happening on the HV rail the effect of higher ESR on an amps tone can be good OR bad depending on how and what is coupled together. There was a long thread over at the Amp Garage about the right filters for TW Express type amps. Though the subject of ESR never came up it was a boutique cap that took the prize. It was specially designed to perform like a vintage cap?!? In the end it was decided that old caps must have been better than new ones so these special caps made to be like older ones must be worth the premium. In fact I believe that these boutique caps were probably designed intentionally with shortcommings to emulate vintage caps. But I have no proof of that. Whatever the case, they made the amps "sound" right. Less harsh and so on. I do believe the guys there have become very good at cloning that amp whether by tech or trial and error. Either way it's a focused effort and I don't think they blow smoke up their own a$$e$ like some gear nuts do. So I'm inclined to believe their findings.

Small series resistors probably would have given the same result.

[Ronsonic]

So we get a call. Dude thinks his amp is defective, it's new, made in China, a line we are a major service center for. He's got a super primo $180 guitar cable that puts so much signal into the amp that he didn't need to use the tone controls on his old amp. But with his new amp he gets no sound if the treble, bass and mid knobs are turned down. With all the signal from his cable this must mean that his new amp is broke. Yes, really.

As for mojoman with the Musicman, I'm curious that he is afraid of losing his vintage sound by using new caps, but isn't afraid that silver wire will mess up the vintagey goodness. Sorta curious where he draws the line. That's something I'd ask him about in the context of "informing myself."

I've learned to keep a very open mind when a customer talks to me about his observations and extreme skepticism when he talks about diagnostics and prescriptions. When a guy says "there's this new thing in the tone I don't like" no matter how hard it is for him to articulate it or describe it or for me to actually hear it, I'll walk to the end of the earth with him to sort it out. English is a terrible language for describing sonic artifacts - I'm not sure there's a better one either - but if the topic is something that he hears or feels in the sound, that's worth pursuing. When someone says it needs a particular part or procedure that's when my bullshit detector goes off.

On service tickets I like to see things like "sounds muddy" and don't want stuff like "needs new transistors."

[Chuck H]

So we get a call. Dude thinks his amp is defective, it's new, made in China, a line we are a major service center for. He's got a super primo $180 guitar cable that puts so much signal into the amp that he didn't need to use the tone controls on his old amp. But with his new amp he gets no sound if the treble, bass and mid knobs are turned down. With all the signal from his cable this must mean that his new amp is broke. Yes, really.

You should have just moved the bass pot coupling from the mid pot CTR to the ungrounded leg. Might have had to lift and bend two pot legs from the PC but your customer would have thought you were a genius.

[Enzo]

Rewire all his controls backwards, then tell him that was the way Jimi Hendrix used his amps.