I can't decide what pickups to put in this guitar...

[David Schwab]

I love the .1uf cap. You can really warm things up when you want to. I wouldnt really describe them as being muddy; when used right you can get a really good bassy growl. Certainly expands the range of the tone knob quite a bit.

So in other words you never turn it off all the way. I find a smaller value cap makes the control much more useful, because you can actually turn it to zero and have a useful sound. I never want a "warm" tone, which generally means lack of high end. If I want something like that I use the neck pickup.

It also makes the guitar sound less distinct. I play bass in a classic rock cover band, and the guitarist, who is very good, tends to use a tone with no sharp edges. Because of that people sometimes say the guitar needs to be louder because it's not aggressive enough. But he's plenty loud (has a Mesa amp), he's just using too "warm" of a tone. My Vox combo on the other hand sounds thinner side by side with the Mesa, but it cuts through better and I don't have to play as loud on stage with the band I play guitar in. You can also hear every note in the chords I play.

Guitarist often use too much bass in their sound. It might sound good right in front of the amp, but t tends to clutter up the low end in a band situation, and leave no room for the bass and drums.

But everyone has their own idea of what kind of sound they want to get. The softer warmer tones often make it easier to play because they are more forgiving to mistakes. (i.e. people can't hear what you are playing)

[TammCustomPickups]

I am with david on this one. the guitar should have a bright sound too it. What sounds good when your playing by yourself and what sounds good in a band setting are very different.

[big_teee]

The Stratocaster came with 250k Pots and a .1uf Disk Cap for many years.
Pretty sure some of Our favorite players played them this way.
Jimi, Stevie, David Gilmour, Eric Johnson, Mark Knopfler, Robert Cray, 50s, 60s & 70s Strats, etc.
Low output pickups and those pots and caps equal those tones.
This was strictly a Stratocaster setup, Whether you like them that way or not, that is how they came.
I don't like that big of a cap on humbuckers.

[David Schwab]

The Stratocaster came with 250k Pots and a .1uf Disk Cap for many years.
Pretty sure some of Our favorite players played them this way.
Jimi, Stevie, David Gilmour, Eric Johnson, Mark Knopfler, Robert Cray, 50s, 60s & 70s Strats, etc.
Low output pickups and those pots and caps equal those tones.
This was strictly a Stratocaster setup, Whether you like them that way or not, that is how they came.
I don't like that big of a cap on humbuckers.

And they also came with .047µF caps. Which guitars did they use? Did they mod them? You are making lots of assumptions.

Did those players you mentioned turn the tone control to zero with a .1 cap? And that cap isn't even wired to the bridge pickup. So I'd bet you they never used the tone controls at all.

My point is with a smaller value cap you can actually get a useable tone from the tone control. And on a Strat you really need a tone control on the bridge pickup. That's one of the first mods I do.

A lot of those guys you list use newer Strats with non stock electronics. Gilmour has used EMGs for years. For years Eric Johnson used stacked DiMarzios with the bottom coil turned off. I'm sure many of the others did not have or use .1 tone caps. Find me a recording where they are using them. Better yet, forget them and get your own tone. lol

[big_teee]

Most of the old players like gilmour played many different guitars, including Lace and fender single coils.
Most guys do the bridge tone cap mod.
There doesn't always have to be just one way to do things.
On certain strats, and certain pickups I like the .1uf, David may not, but I do.
I like them wired different ways, depending on the guitar.
The eric Johnson Sig Guitar wires the tone to the bridge and leaves the middle pickup with no tone.
The strat has been wired 9 ways from Sunday, and whatever is for your individual taste.
T

[David Schwab]

On certain strats, and certain pickups I like the .1uf, David may not, but I do.

How often do you turn the tone control to zero with that cap?

[ken]

Actually Bigtee is right

The .1uf cap actually has use in a Strat. Not only has it been stock in Strats from 1954 to 1975 or thereabouts, but it works great in 'roots rock' styles for doubling bass lines. Also, you can get lower toned rhythm tonal sweep than the .05 cap too. Best of all, it's the secret of Clapton's 'woman tone' - turn the amp volumes all the way up, turn the guitar volume all the way up, and turn the rhythm pickup tone all the way off. Select the rhythm pickup by itself, add a medium amount of overdrive, and listen.,.

ken

[David Schwab]

Best of all, it's the secret of Clapton's 'woman tone' - turn the amp volumes all the way up, turn the guitar volume all the way up, and turn the rhythm pickup tone all the way off.

Nope. If you check out the old Cream movie, he shows how to do it... on an SG. Both pickups are on, one or both tones are off. He wasn't playing a Strat back then. That's .02µF caps. You can get a perfect woman tone with a .02 or .047µF cap. Having both pickups on lowers the impedance, and the cap works at a higher frequency. That was also how he got the "Beano" tone. Both pickups on, the tone rolled off, and a Rangemaster treble booster.

I'll be happy to demonstrate it if you like. This is why I have tone controls on all my guitars. Back in the 80s when many guitars didn't even have tone controls, I used to like to show players that tone, and how you can't get it with no tone control.

And that was my point, with a smaller value cap you can turn the control to zero and get that nice resonant boost, and the woman tone. 0.1µF is too low, and gives you mud. I'm not looking to double bass parts (and Tic-Tack bass was bright anyway), and .1 doesn't even sound good in basses. That's why Fender switched to .047µF.

Large value caps shunt all the mids to ground.

[copperheadroads]

Some of the big Manufacturers made some strange decisions in the past ,I have a customer with a stock 70's tele & it has 1 meg pots ,& it a standard tele ,not anything with the Wide Range Humbuckers .
I also like the .1uf cap in an overly bright that I own

[SonnyW]

I like the .1uF cap in certain cases. Fender used a .1uF paper wax cap ZNW1P1 for years in the Strat, and in Tele's too, then changed to a .1uF Ceramic "Red Dime" cap in the early 60's. They didn't start using the .05 uF ceramic cap until about 1969 or 1970. I have researched the heck out of this, because I had a customer that I made a set of strat pickups for to precise 1965 specs. He had very good ears and was intent on nailing the Hendrix tone, even sending me MP3's and saying the tone I am looking for is in seconds 12-13 etc. He installed them in his guitar with the stock .022 uf caps and was happy with the neck, but the bridge was just not completely right until I sent him a .1uF "red dime" ceramic and a wiring diagram to separate the neck and bridge tone controls, so he runs the neck on .022 and the bridge and mid on .1uf tone caps. I don't like anything bigger than .047 uF for a humbucker though, and a lot of the time I like to use .033.

[teletwanger48]

How about getting you a 57 strat, pull the pickups and put in your build and part out the 57.....

Just kidding..

Why not try a real vintage sounding set of pickups? I would get pickups in the 6.5k or less for neck/mid and slightly higher for bridge.. and I am sure you don't need reminding.. pickup height adjustment is EVERYTHING to tone for that particular pickup. Not a fixed place, but you have to listen for the sweet spot... often the very bright, hollow sound can come from the pickups being a tad far from the strings..

[David Schwab]

I like the .1uF cap in certain cases. Fender used a .1uF paper wax cap ZNW1P1 for years in the Strat, and in Tele's too, then changed to a .1uF Ceramic "Red Dime" cap in the early 60's. They didn't start using the .05 uF ceramic cap until about 1969 or 1970. I have researched the heck out of this, because I had a customer that I made a set of strat pickups for to precise 1965 specs. He had very good ears and was intent on nailing the Hendrix tone, even sending me MP3's and saying the tone I am looking for is in seconds 12-13 etc. He installed them in his guitar with the stock .022 uf caps and was happy with the neck, but the bridge was just not completely right until I sent him a .1uF "red dime" ceramic and a wiring diagram to separate the neck and bridge tone controls, so he runs the neck on .022 and the bridge and mid on .1uf tone caps. I don't like anything bigger than .047 uF for a humbucker though, and a lot of the time I like to use .033.

OK, I see contradictory stuff here... When did Fender have "stock .022 uf caps"? Fender never used .022, but Gibson did. You said yourself that they used 0.1 or .05µF. I have a '72 Mustang with a .05µF ceramic cap. My '59 Jazzmaster probably had the .1 caps, but those have been long gone. Obviously they changed the value of the caps to something they felt worked better. You can be a slave to tradition or find what really works.

And what does the tone cap have to do with the bridge pickup on a Strat? It's not connected to a tone control. And since there is no associated tone pot for the bridge pickup, how did you use a .1 cap for the bridge pickup without rewiring the guitar? And if you did rewire the guitar, how is that keeping with a Hendrix tone? And keep in mind that when the pot is on 10 the cap isn't doing anything.

If you want a better Hendrix bridge pickup tone, or better tone in general, angle the pickup in the opposite direction, like this:

[ken]

OK, I see contradictory stuff here... When did Fender have "stock .022 uf caps"? Fender never used .022, but Gibson did. You said yourself that they used 0.1 or .05µF. I have a '72 Mustang with a .05µF ceramic cap. My '59 Jazzmaster probably had the .1 caps, but those have been long gone. Obviously they changed the value of the caps to something they felt worked better. You can be a slave to tradition or find what really works.

And what does the tone cap have to do with the bridge pickup on a Strat? It's not connected to a tone control. And since there is no associated tone pot for the bridge pickup, how did you use a .1 cap for the bridge pickup without rewiring the guitar? And if you did rewire the guitar, how is that keeping with a Hendrix tone? And keep in mind that when the pot is on 10 the cap isn't doing anything.

I dig Dave's guitar myself... very visual indeed. What was the hole in the body between the pickguard and jack cup for?

The statement about .022 caps in a vintage Strat could probably be a typo. That's cool. I do have a completely stock 2005? Mexistrat here that has a factory mylar .022uf chiclet tone cap inside, and I use it for demonstrations. I like the sound of .1uf tone caps myself, but I play .05 sometimes too. It depends on what I want to sound like at the time.

It's true that a stock Strat has no bridge tone control of any kind. Many players feel that this is one of the major issues with playing one today.

I read somewhere that Jimi had a strat with a 'secret switch' mod that let him turn on the neck and bridge pickups at the same time, by shorting the stock lever switch's neck and bridge terminals together. I have this on my black guitar's volume pull pot in the OP. The weird thing about this mod is if the lever switch is in the rhythm position and you activate this mod the rhythm tone control really does roll off both pickups' tone. If the lever switch is in the lead position when you activate the mod, there is no tone control at all, just rhythm and lead pickups only and the volume pot. Try it.

Also, the tone controls on stock wiring systems actually do roll off a small amount of highs even if the controls are on 10. Why? Because 250K worth of resistance from a tone pot 'on 10' is still a path through the tone cap. For an example, look at a Tele rewired with no load tone pots. These pots are made so that when the pot is all the way up the variable resistance wiper is physically insulated from the pot's resistance track, which does positively remove the pot and tone capacitor from the circuit. If you play while turning the pot down from full up very slowly, you can hear a point where the highs drop a bit. This is where the pot's wiper leaves the pot's insulated area and starts to touch the actual resistance... and the tone cap starts to have an effect.

........................................................ ........................................................ ...............

Capacitor values (like pickups or anything else) are an artistic decision made by the individual musician. As a pickup maker, it's my job to help the musician realize the tone he or she hears in their soul, and if a musician wants to use a certain cap, switching system, or anything else in their instrument it's not up to me to dissuade them. I can listen to the instrument they have already and find out what they want to sound like, and advise them on how to best get the tone they want with what they have. Maybe they don't really need a new set of pickups, but all they need is a wiring change, or just a capacitor value change. That's cool, it's all in what works for them and I don't have to sell sets of pickups to everybody I talk to.

peace,
ken

[SonnyW]

OK, I see contradictory stuff here... When did Fender have "stock .022 uf caps"? Fender never used .022, but Gibson did. You said yourself that they used 0.1 or .05µF. I have a '72 Mustang with a .05µF ceramic cap. My '59 Jazzmaster probably had the .1 caps, but those have been long gone. Obviously they changed the value of the caps to something they felt worked better. You can be a slave to tradition or find what really works.

And what does the tone cap have to do with the bridge pickup on a Strat? It's not connected to a tone control. And since there is no associated tone pot for the bridge pickup, how did you use a .1 cap for the bridge pickup without rewiring the guitar? And if you did rewire the guitar, how is that keeping with a Hendrix tone? And keep in mind that when the pot is on 10 the cap isn't doing anything.

If you want a better Hendrix bridge pickup tone, or better tone in general, angle the pickup in the opposite direction, like this:

The customer's guitar was a Squier Classic Vibe 50's model and he installed the pickups himself, I didn't. That's what he told me the cap value was. I don't know if it had been previously modified or not. It wasn't an American Standard Strat. Besides, I didn't personally see this guitar, he was 200 miles away, and I sent him the pickups and we did this over email and the phone. After I read your post, I did look up the service diagram on that guitar. http://support.fender.com/service_di...Strat_SISD.pdf It doesn't really show the capacitor value. It is marked 333 in the diagram whatever that means. The wiring diagram does show that on his guitar the tone control T2 wasn't wired to the bridge stock from the factory. But the customer wanted the tone control on the bridge and I sent him a customized wiring diagram to put the neck pickup on one tone control T1 by itself and the bridge and middle together on the other one T2.

I am not trying to be a slave to tradition, I realize that rewiring the guitar is not in keeping with what may have been stock in Hendrix's time. The customer wasn't either. He was using his ears to judge if he was getting the tone he wanted. We tried different things and this is what worked for him. I was not trying to push .1uf caps or anything else either. No motive. Just reporting my experience here with this one customer.

By the way, when the tone control is on 10 the cap is still doing a little because the resistance of the pot isn't infinite. Some of the capacitor is still in the circuit unless no-load pots are installed. It doesn't change a lot, but it does have some effect, especially with lower value pots, like 250K.

Edit: Just saw Ken's post and I agree. Also this got me curious and I looked up the service diagram for the current American Stratocaster. http://support.fender.com/service_di...0_02A_SISD.pdf

So they have evidently changed to a .022uF cap after all.

[David Schwab]

By the way, when the tone control is on 10 the cap is still doing a little because the resistance of the pot isn't infinite. Some of the capacitor is still in the circuit unless no-load pots are installed. It doesn't change a lot, but it does have some effect, especially with lower value pots, like 250K.

I'll quote Mike Sulzer here:

As you turn down the tone control pot from ten, the major effect is changing the resistive loading on the resonant circuit. This is because the impedance of the capacitor in the range of the resonance is a lot less than the pot value. As the pot gets closer to zero, the capacitor becomes important, but the initial effect is just resistive loading.

So on 10 the cap isn't doing anything, but the resistance of the pot is.

I haven't worked on any recent Strat's wiring, but I put .022µF in my guitars and usually .047µF in my passive basses, but one of them has a .022µF, which sounds really cool when you turn it all the way down. I picked these values based on what sounded good to me and the way I play. I know guitarist that remove their tone controls, but I find you can get really cool tones with them, and I like using different tones.