help choosing capacitors: mallory 150 vs juniper vintage tone vs orange drop ..

[mikepukmel]

I have a bill of materials, as far as the capacitance, values go, but I have no idea how to choose what kind of capacitor, aside from electrolytics.

the juniper vintage tone are like 5x the price, in the 5.00 range, compared to Mallory 150.

I have seem a negative comment on the blogs about using orange drop (Sprague 715).

Can anyone help? This is fora clone build of a Fender Deluxe AB763.

Thanks!

[copperheadroads]

Nice thread . Always a debate Sozo vs Mallory 150 as well ...it would be interesting to see what others think .

[nosaj]

Nice thread . Always a debate Sozo vs Mallory 150 as well ...it would be interesting to see what others think .

I've used the Sozo Blues for cap replacements on Fenders. No complaints from owners on any tone change. They say sounds like it did before it started sounding bad.
If they're happy I'm for sure happy.

nosaj

[mikepukmel]

Thanks!

[Leo_Gnardo]

I've used the Sozo Blues for cap replacements on Fenders. No complaints from owners on any tone change. They say sounds like it did before it started sounding bad.
If they're happy I'm for sure happy.

Funny thing I get the same review when using Mallory 150.

Some rare customers bring me a box or plastic bag full of Sozos or some other boo-tiki parts. They like their amps' sound too, but they're a bit cash poorer for it. So it goes.

Time for some Sunday Funnies:

[nosaj]

Funny thing I get the same review when using Mallory 150.

Some rare customers bring me a box or plastic bag full of Sozos or some other boo-tiki parts. They like their amps' sound too, but they're a bit cash poorer for it. So it goes.

Time for some Sunday Funnies:

Me , I'm tone deaf when it comes to that stuff, but I do know I love a cranked tweed amp champ or deluxe.

nosaj

[mikepukmel]

Thanks Leo. I needed that!

[mikepukmel]

I know I want the thing to "sound good" but I can't quite quantify that statement. I do know that I hated, with a passion, the cranked sound of the period Fender Princeton Reverb I had. But deluxes or most others sounded awesome cranked. The clean sound was just fine, though. So, after lots of reading, I *think* I understand that it was the cathodyne phase inverter that made the nasty clipping. Hence the choice to build a Deluxe AA763 type chassis. Now Im trying to sort out the component stuff, spending way too much time on it. I thought this would be easy. Actually, before I started on this thing, I though folks would have BOM's posted with component sources! heh. No such luck.

[Leo_Gnardo]

More cap choices. Nothing at all bad about MPP's, metallized polypropylene. Mouser used to have what I take to be an in-house line "Xicon," now they sell very similar looking and sounding Panasonic. FWIW I always get 630V rated caps. DigiKey and I'm sure other suppliers have them too. The "brown chiclet" Panasonic MPP is cheapest of the choices, they're tough and sound just fine. What to use, what to use.... ?????

I know I want the thing to "sound good" but I can't quite quantify that statement. I do know that I hated, with a passion, the cranked sound of the period Fender Princeton Reverb I had. But deluxes or most others sounded awesome cranked. The clean sound was just fine, though. So, after lots of reading, I *think* I understand that it was the cathodyne phase inverter that made the nasty clipping. Hence the choice to build a Deluxe AA763 type chassis.

Maybe the inverter but did you ever try swapping speakers? Not totally, just patch one amp's speaker into the other amp's output. That kind of comparison would tell you a lot: maybe too much worrying over amp components when the major driver of amp tone is what speaker it's driving.

There is something to phase inverter tone especially when overdriven but I luv to bits the George Thorogood sound he gets from his dimed Princeton Reverb. Plus I get to hear in-person an excellent local guitarist who uses Princetons on some gigs, Deluxes on others, sounds terrific on either. No worries building the Deluxe copy though, and you don't really need both norm & vib channels, simplify where you can.

[nsubulysses]

Recently I switched an orange drop to a Mallory 150 for my V1 coupling cAp in my build because I was finding a slight unpleasantness to the distortion tone. The orange drop has a bit more "klang" to rhe pick attack compared to the Mallory which was a little lighter andsmoother sounding pick attack.

The next day I felt like a total loser. Lowering the cathode resistor of my cold clipping stage from 27k to 15k made about 1000X more impact to the tone than cap brand change, which in retrospect was just a vain misguided attempt at troubleshooting little nuances of the tone To try to make the amp sound better

Perhaps the Mallory had more capacitance and that was why it sounded a tiny tiny bit different.

I almost went down the rabbit hole but you gotta remember valuable advice someone said that I think is true, something like , "you should only choose components by brand when you're at the point that changing any component by value makes the amp sound worse "

[nosaj]

I know I want the thing to "sound good" but I can't quite quantify that statement. I do know that I hated, with a passion, the cranked sound of the period Fender Princeton Reverb I had. But deluxes or most others sounded awesome cranked. The clean sound was just fine, though. So, after lots of reading, I *think* I understand that it was the cathodyne phase inverter that made the nasty clipping. Hence the choice to build a Deluxe AA763 type chassis. Now Im trying to sort out the component stuff, spending way too much time on it. I thought this would be easy. Actually, before I started on this thing, I though folks would have BOM's posted with component sources! heh. No such luck.

Somewhere I read and have experienced that "Perfection gets in the way of getting anything done." I am not a perfectionist though. I've done some junkbox build (Visually nasty looking point to point stuff, Sonically awesome to my ears) stuff salvaged from organs and other electronic devices only using new electrolytic capcitors nothing fancy just what was needed to get the job done.
Leo fender didn't hunt stuff down(well maybe cheap stuff) to make amps. Don't sweat it just build it and troubleshoot the build out and you Will find what you like because you can tinker with it.
nosaj

[Leo_Gnardo]

Don't sweat it just build it and troubleshoot the build out and you Will find what you like because you can tinker with it.

Gets my vote. In fact, build it on turret board, makes it that much easier to swap out parts.

Also, Juniper ? ? ? Maybe Jupiter, that's a brand name brought back after a long absence, wax paper capacitors. Heck even Fender has their own overpriced wax paper & comb kazoo kaps. They've caught on to the idea they can make money too, why not, from selling boo-tiki parts. Do they sound just like 1951? Let's take a trip in the time machine & listen.

[nsubulysses]

Also it really depends what forums you ask the question on because here people tend to not be particularly picky towards a brand with magic mojo but on some other forums they could probably do a 10 page thread and be having a blast.

[mikepukmel]

Also it really depends what forums you ask the question on because here people tend to not be particularly picky towards a brand with magic mojo but on some other forums they could probably do a 10 page thread and be having a blast.

That's why I love this forum. I have seen loooong threads on a few other forums where people basically say if you don't use brand Y capacitor, you're a loser and your amp will sound terrible.

[mikepukmel]

Thanks everyone!

Yeah, I admit a bit of analysis paralysis (not wildly so, though) on the first amp build. Maybe a little too worried about building something that sounds terrible. Im starting to order parts, have the boards ordered, and next orders to go out are the transformer order, caps tube sockets and chassis orders. I will post the successes and failures along the way.