Cap question

[Whitmore Willy]

I need a couple of questions answered. I also need some opinions. Ya, I know "I like bacon with my eggs" is an opinion, but not the kind I need.

 

1. I am changing my pots and caps on my paul. Garyelcrrt gave some good info in the Question on Tone post. He said .015 caps will sound brighter than .022 caps. Makes sense, I will try both. I see that caps also have a volt rating. This can vary from 100v to 600v or more. In what way does this effect the pots, sound...etc? Is there an optmum voltage and why or why not?

 

2. I am thinking of soldering a couple of short wires with alligator clips on the ends where the caps will eventually go. In this way I can easily change out several types of caps to see which sounds best to me. Am I wasting my time? Will the wires and clips change the function of a cap so as to give me a false tone?

 

3. In your opinion, what kind of caps do you like and why?

 

All help is appreciated.

[TWANG]

V wont change the sound. You typically find 25V caps in guitars.. sometimes less if they go cheap. voltages are low in there. so, don't sweat it.

I have a 600V sprague in one of my teles. *L*

 

No, use the clips, see what you like. good idea.

 

In guitars I like to use sprague or mallorys because people like to see brand names..but in truth, I never could tell any difference.

In amps it's different, the voltages are higher, the position and use are different.

 

*in my vj, I thought I heard the mallorys as warmer than the spragues.. I also thought I heard a less sharp attack..though I did make some other minor changes as the same time... in my guitar, I took out the epi caps, nice big greenies.. and put in sprague.. I couldn't hear a bit of difference*

 

Radio shack caps are fine.. just avoid the flat little round brown ones.. like you often see in old fenders, because they rot eventually, and

just aren't as good.

[RotcanX]

1. Doesn't really make a diif. Since the voltages in the guitar are typically measured in millivolts... the only time this rating matters is when you are lower than the actual circuit voltage at which point bad things will happen.

 

2. The lower the value, the less treble gets rolled off at the "0" position. Basically you get less range but finer control.

 

3. Nah, that'll work fine. Great way to try different values. See if you can find some .018s too. As far as type goes, I like the orange drops or else anything by Seimens... mostly because of their finer precision. You gotta be some kind of nitwit to go out and spend $60 a pop on authentic bumblebee caps. The thing to remember is that the caps in a guitar are not in the tone path; hence they really can't have much of an effect on the actual sound; every thing that goes through them ends up shorted to ground.

[Whitmore Willy]

Twang and Rotcanx

Thank you for your input. This is the first time I have tried something like this and I now feel more confident. Great forum great members.