Faith-Based Electronics (IMO Addendum)

[rjb]

I traded a guy for a bunch of 600V NOS Bees and last year I compared them to Russian stuff, Vitamin Q, Cornell Dubilier greenies, and a couple other oddball ones I've collected, all the same tight range of capacitance measured on the Extech. Without any reservations a Jensen copper foil paper in oil cap blew them all away, the NOS Sprague sounded tame and flat in comparison.

The Jensen blew the others away in what circuit?
Or do you listen to the caps in free air?

I tap mine with a tiny mallet & listen to their resonance with a stethoscope.
How do you do yours?

-rb

[Mike Sulzer]

The Jensen blew the others away in what circuit?

In a guitar, of course, with the 500K tone pot on 10 in series with the C, making it essentially impossible to even tell the value of the capacitor (or if there is a short across it), not to mention any details of its performance

[rjb]

Do-overs, please! I can't believe I missed that setup!

...but(t) Blisteringly Hot Sphinctritude is a death-metal asshole group.

So... when's your next gig?


Pa-rum-dum,
-rb

[David Schwab]

So... when's your next gig?

The gut wrenching sounds of Fistula!

[David Schwab]

Without any reservations a Jensen copper foil paper in oil cap blew them all away...

Sound clips, or it didn't happen.

[Possum]

I seldom record experiments like that and sure wouldn't post my experiments and R&D stuff here ;-) IN THE GUITAR. Yes it BLEW away everything, nice little passive component just sitting there, if you haven't tried the same thing you just won't know ;-) Very easy to do, hook an alligator clip to the tone cap connections and clip in each cap and play, you can swap caps instantly, I spent hours listening and repeating it over and over. The Jensen was amazing because it sounded LOUD, it really surprised me. The Cornell Dubilier greenies sounded like ceramics but a nice smooth top end, but made the guitar sound like a Fender, Russian paper in oils sounded focused and real nice, NOS bees sounded refined, restrained, middle of the road (certainly not worth $100!!!), the Jensen was just awe inspiring. However, I bought a jensen for the neck and there it made the neck sound more boomy and I didn't like it there, replaced with a Russian pio of the same .015uf value. One oddball cap sounded truly horrible, something called a "musicap" or such. You can tell the values but close values are hard to discern, I tested alot of .033uf's along with .022's and .015's and a couple .047's. The 04's are easy to pick out obviously, the others not so easy because they weren't all the same type of caps, copper foil, the CD's are some kind of film I think, and the Russian pio's with whatever is inside them. The .015's aren't too hard to pick out but they were all the same Russians. Its important to also roll the tone control all the way back to hear how each value and type affects that tone too. Doubters should spend an afternoon trying this out, it was fun, the Angela was sent to me as a gift by someone who loves them, I was dubious, now all my PAF bridge pickups have one installed, pricey too, $25. The amp books I'm reading also say they can do dramatic things in the preamp section, I'm building a Princeton here soon so will swap those in and see what it does in an amp......

[Mike Sulzer]

I am glad to hear that you do not do this on ten. But did you measure the capacitance values to make sure that you were listening to the same value Cs of different types?

I seldom record experiments like that and sure wouldn't post my experiments and R&D stuff here ;-) IN THE GUITAR. Yes it BLEW away everything, ......

[Possum]

Of course I did it on 10, and then fully rolled back to kill the treble. You hear the differences both ways. Yes, I use the Extech to measure and all my caps are in the same range, the NOS Russians are very tight tolerances and the NOS CD's were all in the same range, really, nothing was off more than a very small amount. You can't hear small amounts of difference, even a .033uf and a .022uf don't display a big audio effect, the TYPE of cap does plainly show audio differences. The cap is always in the circuit no matter what, if you want maximum brightness out of a pickup you just remove the tone cap completely. I forgot to mention there was an Orange drop cap in the mix and it plainly is something I would never use in any guitar or amp myself, shrill treble edge thats not musical. The Jensen copper foil showed the most dramatic tonal effect of all. I would also point out that if you're trying this in an offshore guitar with their crappy harnesses you might not hear things as good, every guitar I have I have put in vintage style clean harnesses that let you hear everything the pickups do, the cheap harnesses really mask things in a bad way.

[Mike Sulzer]

Taking the cap out does not do what you think, and so when you write "The cap is always in the circuit no matter what, if you want maximum brightness out of a pickup you just remove the tone cap completely.", you are misunderstanding why there is an audible effect. The cap is in series with the 500K pot, and so the effect is the same if you take it out instead. So, which one is doing it? To understand that, it is a matter of looking at the impedance of the capacitor at frequencies near the pickup resonance, the ones that are related to "brightness". The impedance of the cap is much lower than the resistance of the pot adjusted on 10 (that is, 500K). So that means that it is the resistor that matters: The 500 K resistor loads the pickup, removing "brightness" by lowering the Q of the tuned circuit. Opening the circuit (which is what taking out the cap does) puts the brightness back in. Relatively speaking, the cap is like a short circuit, acting very much like a coupling capacitor in an amplifier circuit does.

So the proper way to take a capacitor completely out of the circuit is to connect the freed up pot terminal to ground. If you do this, you will find that the tone pot behaves pretty much the same when rotated down from 10, but of course as you get closer to zero, it shorts out the pickup instead of giving that really bassy sound.

Now lets go t the other extreme, pot on zero, zero ohms. Now the cap is right across the pickup, and it lowers the resonant frequency. The difference between .022 and .047 is easily audible. 0.033 about halfway in between, and IMO this is not a small effect either. It is, IMO, a much larger effect than the differences between capacitor types. Those differences are small, if audible at all, IMO.

Of course I did it on 10, and then fully rolled back to kill the treble. You hear the differences both ways. Yes, I use the Extech to measure and all my caps are in the same range, the NOS Russians are very tight tolerances and the NOS CD's were all in the same range, really, nothing was off more than a very small amount. You can't hear small amounts of difference, even a .033uf and a .022uf don't display a big audio effect, the TYPE of cap does plainly show audio differences. The cap is always in the circuit no matter what, if you want maximum brightness out of a pickup you just remove the tone cap completely. I forgot to mention there was an Orange drop cap in the mix and it plainly is something I would never use in any guitar or amp myself, shrill treble edge thats not musical. The Jensen copper foil showed the most dramatic tonal effect of all. I would also point out that if you're trying this in an offshore guitar with their crappy harnesses you might not hear things as good, every guitar I have I have put in vintage style clean harnesses that let you hear everything the pickups do, the cheap harnesses really mask things in a bad way.

[rjb]

So the proper way to take a capacitor completely out of the circuit is to connect the freed up pot terminal to ground.

Or (if you are doing A/B testing) short out the the capacitor with a jumper.
Yes, I know that's obvious- just translating for dummies like myself.

-rb

[salvarsan]

I seldom record experiments like that and sure wouldn't post my experiments and R&D stuff here

(facepalm)

[Possum]

I wire my harness the old 50's method, the free terminal on the tone pot is cut off ;-) The back of all the pots are connect with ground bus wire, it works for me and I sell exclusively to Les Paul players who wire their guitars that way, in fact I have to be sure they do it that way correctly, not all Les Pauls are wired the old way and it gives a different result than the modern technique. All these guys want their Les Pauls to sound like vintage Les Pauls, so you have to copy every detail of how they were done and it does make a big difference. So I am tied to that specific wiring technique and listened to these caps so I can recommend what works best with my particular pickups, because a factory pickup is never close to what PAF's were and what works for a Duncan, Burstbucker or whatever probably won't work the same with my product. There are some "reissue" caps like Luxe that are fine for cheap guitars but with a real PAF repro they are too harsh. The green Russian pio's are another one that didn't sound too good either. So, I recommend the Jensen copper foils for the bridge and grey bodies Russian .015's for the neck. Real Sprague paper in oil caps are a waste of money, they just don't do much of anything thats worth $100 for some "pull" a tech is selling on Ebay and won't answer questions about what actual value it is or if it was checked for leakage etc. doesn't make sense to buy those.

Different values do give a more noticeable effect, but you should really throw a Jensen in there if you ever actually try this out. I was really skeptical that it would be any different than any other tone cap but the difference is dramatic. You can hear differences in type of cap, some more than others if the values are the same, an orange drop for instance stands out in a negative way. Another thing I really push players away from doing is the "Jimmy Page" wiring. You have to install FOUR push pull pots in there and those things are notoriously cheaply made and are tone killers. The pots on them are mini-pots with the thin carbon traces, they darken the sound and the switches are real cheap, alot of added capacitance by adding all that and the extra wire etc. I have a custom built Nasheville type Tele and the luthier talked me into putting 2 push pull pots in there for some trick wiring, I never used them, they didn't really add anything useful. So, when I removed them and went back to regular 5 way switch with simple wiring the change for the better was dramatic.

[J M Fahey]

*IF* a cap (such as your Jensen example) "sounds LOUD" compared to others it's because it's *OPEN*, thus removing both itself *and* the 500K pot from the pickup load.
If it was not open then it was improperly soldered, getting the same effect. Period. (or the little crocodile clip bit plastic instead of metal).
*OR* its capacitance is way smaller than the value printed.
*OR* it was misread: a .0047uF cap will certainly sound LOUDER than a .047uF one.

[Possum]

You haven't tried this ;-) All caps were measured with an LCR Extech meter. Each cap was listened in about four rounds of to them in sucession, so each cap got listened to four seperate times in random orders over a couple hours; I'm pretty methodical and always want to rule out mistakes by doing repeated trials on anything. The Jensen is permanently soldered into my two demo Les Pauls and still sounds "loud." ;-) Remember, the Jensen was sent to me by a customer with all these claims for how good it was, which I found dubious at the time, well he was right. I recommend them to all my VL PAF customers and they too write me back saying how good these caps are. Try it.

[J M Fahey]

You are right, I have not tried that personally.
And don't pretend to claim so.
But on the other side, I'm pretty sure about what a capacitor does and does not, also what a capacitor can do on "the other side" of a variable resistor.
Please understand this: I do not say that you do not hear what you say you hear, and even more so, I even consider it possible that being there I may hear the same as you , why not?
But, at the same time, I would look for another explanation, different from the *materials used* one, simply because it contradicts so much established Electronics theory and practice.
In particular, I would go for a double blind test, which puts tester's expectatives out of the equation.
As tested, that is not so.