boutique capacitor reveal

[StarryNight]

it seems this guy took apart up a couple of expensive caps to reveal some not so expensive caps!

Uncloaking Reproduction Capacitors

[Bruce Johnson]

Oh no! He removed the Mojo! Now they won't sound as good....

[the great waldo]

Hi
I´d imagine putting a 200v working cap in a 400v marked case is a bit iffy !! Should have a nice effect in a tube amp on Guy Fawkes night.
Cheers

Andrew

[RedHouse]

Old news.

That was discovered years ago (2004) on the LPF, here is the archived relevant data:

ReissueBumbleBees.htm

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

I don't think it could be said enough, though. They just need to be humiliated for doing that.

Is this true of ALL reissue bumblebee capacitors?

If you want to spend a lot of money on a great cap, the V-Cap TFTF or CuTF is the way to go... don't waste time with the others.

[RedHouse]

...Is this true of ALL reissue bumblebee capacitors?...

Should probably check over on the LPF or MLPF.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

Should probably check over on the LPF or MLPF.

I would, but those people scare me.

[salvarsan]

This is one more reason why I have such scathing contempt for the excessive valuation of antique commodities: it guarantees fraud.

But, in my caustic vindictive opinion, the cult followers deserve to be defrauded, the more expensively humiliating the circumstances, the better.

Once old wine sold at auction for over $50k, fraud was inevitable.

Hardy Rodenstock cut a wide swath through the wealthy wine snobs until they realized that his rare wines were fakes. His doctored and artificially aged stuff was usually better than the originals, too.

Instead of living a comfortable upper middle class existence as a wine blender, Rodenstock amassed a fortune fleecing the wealthy.

His ethics were criminal but I laud his choice of victims.
I am disappointed that he didn't fuck them harder.

(*cough!*)

...not that I have any strong opinions on the matter.

[StarryNight]

Old news.

That was discovered years ago (2004) on the LPF, here is the archived relevant data:

ReissueBumbleBees.htm

So if I'm reading this right, Edwin Wilson and Gibson commissioned Wesco to create a reproduction of the bumblebee cap using vintage capacitor specs from purchases in the 50's. And in his rebute he was trying to debunk the photos posted by pepejara:

by saying the foil in those photos don't look anything like the the actual reissue bumblebee foil:


I guess the true reveal here is how a company like Gibson justifies charging $40 for what we know to be fractions of a penny to produce (barring the overhead Gibson had to pay an employee to dig through the filing cabinets).

I really enjoyed his diatribe about how Gibson was unforgiveably sloppy in the 80s with it's reissue specs and now that they've changed there ways, why are people so suspicious about the reissue products they currently put out

note: sorry, I don't really want to hash the details up if they've been beaten to death on some other forum. This was news to me so I'd though I'd share.

[David Schwab]

I guess the true reveal here is how a company like Gibson justifies charging $40 for what we know to be fractions of a penny to produce (barring the overhead Gibson had to pay an employee to dig through the filing cabinets).

Same reason they charge $10,000 for some of their Les Pauls. Are they worth it? Of course not. But there's a sucker born every minute.

Some of the early 80s Les Pauls were funny looking because they didn't bother to get the original masters, or even borrow a real vintage guitar, so they went with photographs and posters! So the body shape is distorted.

Gibson is always "close, but no cigar."

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

Same reason they charge $10,000 for some of their Les Pauls. Are they worth it? Of course not. But there's a sucker born every minute.

They can be nice guitars, but it just highway robbery and they look over stuff that any luthier worth his salt wouldn't over look.

If you have deep pockets and want a Gibson, I'd tell you to buy a Collings every time. I wish Collings was doing those when I was getting my 335...

[Rick Turner]

As the guy here who actually worked for Gibson, I can tell you that one of the main issues with the reissues was the same thing as what happened at Martin with the pegheads getting rounder and rounder over the years. The tooling wore out and they kept using it. Les Paul tops were carved on automatic duplicating carvers, and the master patterns wore. If they wore unevenly, they'd be Bondo repaired, sanded, and put back into service. Eventually details like the recurve were simply lost. Ditto on the humbucker covers...the tooling wore. This also happened at Dobro with the dies to draw the metal bodies, and I saw it when I was sent down to OMI to look over the plant when Gibson first tried to buy that company in 1989. I have the same issue with some of my own guitar tooling used on my pin router, and I don't push through nearly the numbers that the big guys do.

The game changer? CNC machines which once programmed, don't forget the shape that's been drawn and converted into machine code. Modern reissues can be near perfect...based on whatever particular instrument or part was chosen as the master...and they can stay at that level of perfection 'til long after we're gone. So there is no reason other than will that Gibson cannot now make the best reissues ever. If they want to, they can. That does not erase decades of mistrust, however.

[Joe Gwinn]

Allowing tooling wear to distort things was just sloppiness. The traditional approach was to have a master tool that was used only to make production tools. If the volume was high enough, one would have three layers: master, intermediate masters, working masters. This is exactly what was done when pressing millions of LP phonograph disks, and is now used to make CDs. No computer stuff needed.

Now, one uses CNC to cut new working tools.

But, small shops beware: If your CNC contractor owns the cutting program tapes, it can become hard to change CNC contractors. One defense is to have the contractor make a copy of each critical shape (like the guitar body with routes) in aluminum, and put this aside. Then, the new contractor can trace the aluminum master, and make an essentially perfect replica of the original (to the accuracy needed for making guitars), all without the existence, permission, or help of the old contractor.

[David Schwab]

They can be nice guitars, but it just highway robbery and they look over stuff that any luthier worth his salt wouldn't over look.

For a lot less money you can have a perfect custom made guitar built. It's not like Gibson is hand building these things.

If you have deep pockets and want a Gibson, I'd tell you to buy a Collings every time. I wish Collings was doing those when I was getting my 335...

Those are nice guitars. I don't care for 335s myself. I did own a 330TD once.

If I want a nice guitar, I just build my own.

[Rick Turner]

Joe, it may be sloppy, but it's also real world. The guys on the shapers and carving machines had quotas and they had to make the numbers, so whatever quick fix they had to do was what they did. Also, a lot of the wear is/was fairly slow, and you wouldn't necessarily notice it from day to day. Year to year is another story. I see wear and nicks in my own pin router tooling, and a bit of superglue, a bit of tape, and I've got necks going. Not so, of course, with the CNC stuff where all you have to do is make sure the machine remembers where 0,0,0 is and that you've measured the diameter of your cutting tools when you change them and make the correct offsets.