Decade Capacitor Boxes

[kayakerca]

Had a customer in the other day not overly happy with the Strat bridge pickup from a set wound by a boutique winder in the U.S. he had put in his custom built Strat. Me, I thought the entire set sounded great. Made me think it was maybe time to invest in a decade capacitor box to help give players a better sense of the amount and sensitivity of roll off of various capacitance values (not that a cap will affect tone with the pot wide open). So off to ebay I go. Found a seller with a number of them for sale, so I bought one. Near new condition and only $30.00. And since it was in Ottawa a 10 minute drive from my house, NO shipping charges! Don't know how often I will actually get to use it, but it's now on part of the herd of tools and toys that I've been building up in this business. Far more accurate than any cap I have in the parts cabinet.



Set here to .047µF, reading .04704µF on my Extech.



Ya, ya, probably most of you think what a waste of money. But for $30 you can show a player a lot more than vs just tell him/her how a different cap value will affect roll off. For what I'm doing, at the end of the day, I think it will end up being $30.00 well spent.

Oh ya, and as rare as it is today, the thing was made in Canada!

[Enzo]

I used them a lot more often when I was younger, in my experimenting days. I have a couple resistor decade boxes and a resistor sub box, plus a cap sub box. a sub box just has a selection, not dialing in any value you want, but similarly used. It is convenient not to have to root through the drawers for some part value you want to try, with two clip leads and the box, you can sub any value you like.

[rjb]

That's a nice looking piece of kit- and probably worth the cost to impress customers.

For my own occasional use, I just have a "cap sub box" without the box - a 12 position rotary switch with flying leads. Assembled like a varitone selector switch, with 11M pullup resistors to prevent popping (just in case I eventually decide to install it in an instrument or enclosure). Switch position 1 is open, then E6 values 1nF through 47nF.

-rb