Grateful Dead Music Forum

Just curious, what types of caps does everyone use? I know that jerrys guitars had ceramic caps in them. I have been using oil filled ones myself. I am going to order the TPC1 and rewiring my tone circuit. Lots of options out there. Orange drop, dijons, vitamin q. Anyone experiment?


Opinions? Waldo?

cousindave79 wrote:Just curious, what types of caps does everyone use? I know that jerrys guitars had ceramic caps in them. I have been using oil filled ones myself. I am going to order the TPC1 and rewiring my tone circuit. Lots of options out there. Orange drop, dijons, vitamin q. Anyone experiment?


Opinions? Waldo?

RS Guitar Works, whom I'm not affiliated with, has a nice one (hand made), but it's $15.00. I've been tryin it out now for a couple of months and likin it a lot. I'm also tryin out a ceramic for $9.00 that sound good too. There are a lot out there. I've seen "bumble bee" caps on ebay for $120.00. I'm probably gonna go with the RS Guitar works ones for now.

I honestly don't think it matters that much for guitar tone caps. I've used Orange Drop, paper/oil, silver mica, ceramic disk. They all do about the same thing. Roll off the highs and get that "horn" sound when using distortion with the tone rolled all the way off. Sometimes I use the tone rolled about 1/3 to 1/2 down to roll off highs if they're bothering me but they all do about the same thing to my ears. I think the guitar preamp caps are more important. Usually my guitar tone knob is all the way up.

Jim

mijknahs wrote:I honestly don't think it matters that much for guitar tone caps. I've used Orange Drop, paper/oil, silver mica, ceramic disk. They all do about the same thing. Roll off the highs and get that "horn" sound when using distortion with the tone rolled all the way off. Sometimes I use the tone rolled about 1/3 to 1/2 down to roll off highs if they're bothering me but they all do about the same thing to my ears. I think the guitar preamp caps are more important. Usually my guitar tone knob is all the way up.

Jim

Id have to agree with you for the most part. I don't notice any significant difference either. If anything, you do need a good quality pot (yummy) so when you want to roll it of just a little it responds and you don't have to turn it really far and then get a responce that is too much.

I've found that orange drops and the like are very lifeless in a guitar, and ceramic disk always had the best sound. Also, every capacitor has it's own personality, so it's good to test them all individually with your ears for quality in sound and response.

Ceramic discs naturally distort a bit where the orange drop or similar film types are gonna be very clean. Ceramic is inherently a lo-fi kind of thing. Granted the differences are fairly subtle, ceramic seems to add a crispy, gritty, subtly distorted character to audio electronics, even when used as a guitar treble-shunt cap. Often times that "grit" can be a musical and likable sound. But definitely not always. Sometimes in certain places, ceramic can have a harsh and nasty result. Trust your ears. If you like the sound, then it's right. We know that ceramic guitar tone cap's worked just fine with Jerry's DiMarzios.

B