boutique capacitor reveal

[Joe Gwinn]

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.

I don't disagree that that is how it often goes, and that the guys with quotas just had to make their numbers.

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.

Yes, exactly. It's the managers who were a bit too sloppy, who let it go too far.

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.

My suspicion is that what happened is that nobody knew what was going to sell big, so they started with minimal tooling, and see what the market will like. This makes perfect sense. The mistake was not beefing the tooling up once it became clear which models deserved it.

CNC certainly can make such problems go away. CNC is really a bit too expensive for making guitar bodies directly, but is perfect for making the tooling for the router to do the work.

[RedHouse]

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.

Well Edwin's pic was of a film-n-foil cap, the actual wesco/bumblebee appears to be a metalized film cap. The small pic with the pennies in it was what Edwin said was inside their re-issue bumblebee, the larger pic is actually taken from a re-issue cap and can clearly be seen it's not a film-n-foil type but a metalized film type.

It's not a huge tone issue they are good sounding caps, it's just the whole mis-presentation thing that urk's most people and causes distrust toward Gibson. The minute they started asuming the musicians who would be buying historics are as stupid/uninformed as the average Guitar Center Squire/Epi buyer, well they made a mistake there IMHO.

[belwar]

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?

I disagree - He doesnt claim they are the originals. He claims they are replicas. He's using PIO caps, and making them look like the originals. They sound great too. I've popped open about 10 of them and the voltage rating is 200-400v which clearly is 200x overkill for a guitar. I've met the owner of luxe many times, and hosted him at our shop, and he's the nicest young dad. Super cool quiet guy that digs old electronics.

Any repro bumblebee is going to use either a K40Y Russian Cap, or another PIO cap like General. He also doesnt charge a fortune for them. By the time you including shipping a .022 PIO costs around $2.75, Then he has to encapsulate it, and hand paint the stripes. I think I paid something rediculous like $11 / ea for them which was fine by me as everyone has to make a living. Now I just use the K40Y, but only because its a cost savings and I dont make a vintage correct LP clone.

[David Schwab]

...and I dont make a vintage correct LP clone.

I think the point was they aren't vintage correct. They are new caps in vintage clothing. They aren't made like the original caps at all. It's like Fender with the Gibson style humbuckers in the Wide Range covers. It's just window dressing. So the question is when is a reissue not a reissue? These are not reissue caps, they just look like it.

So why wouldn't Gibson just use them without the fake bumble bee shell? If it's the tone that matters, that's good enough. The reason is they wouldn't get $112 for a pair, that's why. And that's dishonest.

[RedHouse]

...He's using PIO caps, and making them look like the originals. ...Any repro bumblebee is going to use either a K40Y Russian Cap, or another PIO cap like General. ....

I guess you didn't read the article, they are made by Wesco, they are metalized film caps.

...So why wouldn't Gibson just use them without the fake bumble bee shell? If it's the tone that matters, that's good enough. The reason is they wouldn't get $112 for a pair, that's why. And that's dishonest.

Exactly, or alternatively just say they are modern caps with a "vintage looking cover" that would be realistic (and honest).

[salvarsan]

I guess you didn't read the article, they are made by Wesco, they are metalized film caps.
...
Exactly, or alternatively just say they are modern caps with a "vintage looking cover" that would be realistic (and honest).

Two clarifications:

1. It's called "fraud".
2. The fraud species is "new wine in old bottles".