the tone cap myth...

[jason lollar]

Someone wanna look at my schematic and see if they notice anything faulty with how I have it set up- it appears to work fine and I actually believe it is fine but maybe someone can spot some problem i didnt notice- I am not getting the difference possum noted.

[Mike Sulzer]

Someone wanna look at my schematic and see if they notice anything faulty with how I have it set up- it appears to work fine and I actually believe it is fine but maybe someone can spot some problem i didnt notice- I am not getting the difference possum noted.

Looks OK to me. I did not find any difference between .022 and .047 (casual test, not double blind) with the maximum resistance, and you probably read Possum's comments about how I am not using good stuff or just do not care enough.

[Joe Gwinn]

Someone wanna look at my schematic and see if they notice anything faulty with how I have it set up- it appears to work fine and I actually believe it is fine but maybe someone can spot some problem i didnt notice- I am not getting the difference possum noted.

Looks OK to me.

[jason lollar]

thanks, anyone else feel free to chime in if you find anything wrong with it- I am testing with the tone pot all the way up on 10 and all the way down- maybe i need to try different pickups with different frequency response and output and try different values for the pots- I can think of several things to try- I am not doing double blind at this point- I am just trying to hear some repeatable or noticeable difference and rule out the player as much as possible. If I can get any kind of difference at all I will go over to doing some double blind tests but right now I aint gettin nuttun.
It may be a while before I can go back to it- just trying to come up with an honest answer when people ask me about caps.

[Possum]

....

This thread just won't die, LOL :-) It'd be really easy to get a precise answer about same value caps. Hookup a driver coil and drive a frequency sweep through your rig and do a chart for each cap, then overlay them over eachother. If there are differences they will show up, maybe you won't be able to hear them but that doesn't mean others can't hear it, I know guys who hear stuff dogs don't hear.

I noticed another BIG difference in VALUE cap change and thats when the tone pot is rolled completely back. The .022uf doesn't get near as dark as the .047 cap did, I like it better than the muffled-to-death .047. Mike you ought to get a frequency response test done on your ears if you think you have hearing loss. Leo Fender had some serious hearing problems that got worse at the end of his career, and you'll notice the pickups he made for G&L were pretty shrill, they probably sounded great to him, but one of those G&L ASAT's will shatter a plastic glass :-) I've been accused of playing too loud and too bright, but its not from hearing loss, its because I LIKE playing loud and like a bright tone, I'm just plain evil :-) But, seriously when I used to go the jam all the time you could tell who had hearing loss problems when they played, they would play ridiculously loud and very shrill, way beyond the stuff I'd do by preference. I like loud but not painful and I like dynamics too, a band playing so loud that everyone's solos have no tonal depth, all night long, is just boring and dangerous for one's hearing. I'll let you know how these NOS Spragues compare to my new .022 caps when I get to it....

[Mike Sulzer]

I noticed another BIG difference in VALUE cap change and thats when the tone pot is rolled completely back. The .022uf doesn't get near as dark as the .047 cap did, I like it better than the muffled-to-death .047.

Yes, of course; that is when there should be a big difference, and sure enough, there is. But I do not see why you point out the obvious.

Thanks for your concern about my hearing. I have one normal ear and one with Meniere's disease. Nothing anybody can do about it.

[Possum]

...

Well it wasn't obvious to me, thats why I started the thread :+)

Well now I don't believe there's no cures out there if you do some searching around:
http://www.tchain.com/otoneurology/d...s/men_alt.html
I have some problems with my vintage 1950 body that are no fun, and I've found that staying away from doctors is often the best advice. If you dig through alternative health information you're bound to find something that is at least helpful and at best may cure. I got real sick about 2 years ago and I thought I was done for, two visits to a hack doctor and he nearly did me in, it was altnernative health info that put me back in the saddle....

[Joe Gwinn]

thanks, anyone else feel free to chime in if you find anything wrong with it- I am testing with the tone pot all the way up on 10 and all the way down- maybe i need to try different pickups with different frequency response and output and try different values for the pots- I can think of several things to try- I am not doing double blind at this point- I am just trying to hear some repeatable or noticeable difference and rule out the player as much as possible. If I can get any kind of difference at all I will go over to doing some double blind tests but right now I aint gettin nuttun.
It may be a while before I can go back to it- just trying to come up with an honest answer when people ask me about caps.

You will need the audience of musicians to eliminate the theory that the reason you can't tell the difference is that your hearing isn't up to it. If you have someone else play your test guitar, you can be in the audience, and it can be set up as a double blind test as well. With the player behind a curtain, even your vote counts towards the double-blind test result.

[David Schwab]

You can also have someone else doing the switching, so the player doesn't stop playing.

[jason lollar]

"You will need the audience of musicians to eliminate the theory that the reason you can't tell the difference is that your hearing isn't up to it."

of course I do all my final testing with a comittee off musicians
Of course you could measure it with a frequency sweep but i am more interested in what people can hear- can 2% hear the difference- can 90%?
Is what we hear really the cap. i think there is alot of sloppy testing and thats why we get all the bunk info that you read in books and on the net.

[TD_Madden]

Well it wasn't obvious to me, thats why I started the thread :+)

Well now I don't believe there's no cures out there if you do some searching around:
http://www.tchain.com/otoneurology/d...s/men_alt.html
I have some problems with my vintage 1950 body that are no fun, and I've found that staying away from doctors is often the best advice. If you dig through alternative health information you're bound to find something that is at least helpful and at best may cure. I got real sick about 2 years ago and I thought I was done for, two visits to a hack doctor and he nearly did me in, it was altnernative health info that put me back in the saddle....

yeah, I'm not sure how we got so far away from your original statement!

[Possum]

...

If you're listening to hear minor differences one thing you need to keep in mind is to have the treble on your amp WAY up. If you're one of those guys who plays with treble on 4 and like dark tone you're probably not going to hear small differences in different cap brands. I do this when testing humbuckers, its essential for me to hear the tiniest differences and thats the only way you really can.

[Mike Sulzer]

If you're listening to hear minor differences one thing you need to keep in mind is to have the treble on your amp WAY up. If you're one of those guys who plays with treble on 4 and like dark tone you're probably not going to hear small differences in different cap brands. I do this when testing humbuckers, its essential for me to hear the tiniest differences and thats the only way you really can.

When you listen with the treble all the way up you are every sensitive to differences in the capacitance values. Have you matched them to 1% or better as Joe suggested, with your Extech?

Best way to do this is to buy a hundred and select.

[Possum]

...

I"m not really doing anymore experimenting with tone caps, just going to try the Spragues is all, I don't expect to hear much of a change since the values are the same, all my experimenting time goes into pickups, the tone cap value change was the uknown brick wall I was bumping into as to why this guitar wasn't getting the response my other test guitar with the NOS bumble bees in it is. So problem solved. I'll just stick with what I have now and use whatever my pro player customers recommend if I ever get another Les Paul. I will be interested in Jason's experiment, I've heard from a few guys who've done alot of tone cap swapping and generally they tell me the old stuff is better, but you have to test for leakage and actual capacitance value. I am going to try a .1mf in my strats though, since thats what the original control drawing for them shows and what was used, I've not tried anything good in my strats, right now my focus is on the Les Paul market.

Also got some Snake Oil brand strings to try out, they are bitch to get, only the maker sells them direct and took a month to get. They are really sweet sounding strings, unfortunately the 1st string unraveled off the ball end in the first five minutes of playing, I fixed it and soldered the other unwound strings so it can't happen again. I wonder if anyone has tried the new D'Addario pure nickel sets in comparison. The Snake Oils are excellent tones for vintage Les Paul tone....

[TD_Madden]

The DR all-nickels are quite nice.