thermionickid
Member
ok, so we have all talked about this before, but i wanted to share my experience today. i got some 1950's? cornell dubilier "greenie" .015/600v caps off of ebay because i was actually looking for coupling caps to use in a recent tweed build i finished, and wanted to upgrade the amp. well anyway i was bored and decided to try them in my burny.... wow, i was pleasantly suprised!!!! i took the yellow .022 chicklets out measured them, they were .017 and .019 on my crafstman meter. out of the 10 "greenies" i found two that had the closest readings, .018, and .016 (all of the "greenies" were higher than stated. so we are very close as far as that goes. anyway the first thing i noticed, is that the guitar is less spikey across the board, the taper is way different as far as the amount of rolloff vs knob settings before the swap. now it doesn't get dark until i am at 2-3 and at 1 on the bridge pickup tone knob i am getting a wonderful nasal tone, and the neck pickup has a taper that never gets muffled, it literally just barely cuts the treble enough. which is perfect for me as i never use a muffled neck pickup tone. also the guitar has a slower, sweeter initial note attack. it is not as "fast" as it was before. like going from a solid state rectifier to a 5y3 in a tweed deluxe.
another interesting thing i noticed is what i think is a capacitor charging type of effect. if i strum a chord hard then immediatly turn the tone knob to 0 on either pickup, the volume level drops considerably then rises up to the initial volume over a period of about a second. now these capacitors are very large when compared to the chicklets and i think this is part of the "mojo" of the old large film/foil, and paper in oil capacitors. they are large and in the whole guitar/cord/amp/ circuit they are constantly reacting with the signal voltage from the pickups. EVEN WHEN THE CONTROL IS ON TEN because unless it is a no load pot, the cap is in the circuit. anyway, i have some nos .015 bumblebees on the way also, so i will report those findings as well.
now flame away!! i know the engineer types are going to say there is no difference in the type of cap you use, that it is all because of the tolerance in value. i say there is no way .001 mf difference is causing the dramatic change i have noted.
i will also say that i put vitamin q nos .033 in an mij epiphone i have, and did not experience the same very noticable change. (different taper mostly) i always use my equipment the same way, the same cable, and the same settings and honestly, what was a great guitar before, gives me chills now, it feels alive, dynamic, single note blues runs are so much fun! and just sweeter overall. and i absolutely was not expecting this outcome in any way! i was just bored, and started swapping caps.
another interesting thing i noticed is what i think is a capacitor charging type of effect. if i strum a chord hard then immediatly turn the tone knob to 0 on either pickup, the volume level drops considerably then rises up to the initial volume over a period of about a second. now these capacitors are very large when compared to the chicklets and i think this is part of the "mojo" of the old large film/foil, and paper in oil capacitors. they are large and in the whole guitar/cord/amp/ circuit they are constantly reacting with the signal voltage from the pickups. EVEN WHEN THE CONTROL IS ON TEN because unless it is a no load pot, the cap is in the circuit. anyway, i have some nos .015 bumblebees on the way also, so i will report those findings as well.
now flame away!! i know the engineer types are going to say there is no difference in the type of cap you use, that it is all because of the tolerance in value. i say there is no way .001 mf difference is causing the dramatic change i have noted.
i will also say that i put vitamin q nos .033 in an mij epiphone i have, and did not experience the same very noticable change. (different taper mostly) i always use my equipment the same way, the same cable, and the same settings and honestly, what was a great guitar before, gives me chills now, it feels alive, dynamic, single note blues runs are so much fun! and just sweeter overall. and i absolutely was not expecting this outcome in any way! i was just bored, and started swapping caps.
