CAPS? in a bright Les Paul Classic

[KLINKDETROIT]

I want to tone down and give more girth to my Les Paul. I am currently using a C5 but will try a distortion soon. This guitar is way brighter than my Les paul studio with 498t pickups. I dont use the tone knob but I am pretty sure that even with it turned up the type of cap makes a tonal difference. I know I like having the tone pot connected as it gives the pup more girth and immediacy. I compared removing the cap/ tone pot and having it connected and like it on. I currently have a .022 and a .047 and think they are both too bright.

 

[MattPete]

Re: CAPS? in a bright Les Paul Classic

When I was trying to figure out what type of caps to put in my strat, I hooked up a push pull pot, and had 2 sets of wires with aligator clips hanging out of the pickguard where I could clip in different caps and A/B them. I heard absolutely no tonal difference when switching between a .047 and .010 cap when the tone was on ten. It wasn't until the pot was turned down to 3 or so that a difference started to emerge. I believe this was a 500k audio taper pot.

Alternative, you can do what I did with my Warmoth VIP, which sometimes sounded too bright. My guess is that your guitar suffers from the same thing: the maple cap can make it sound too bright at times.

What I did was to replace the volume control with a push-pull pot. I then installed a cap that bled some of the highs to ground when the pot was pushed in -- pulling out took the cap (0.001uF?) out of the circuit. Basically, I was doing the treble bleed mod, but instead of allowing the treble to bypass the the volume pot, I was shunting it to ground.

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: CAPS? in a bright Les Paul Classic

Your Studio might have 300K pots. I replaced the pots in a Les Paul Studio a couple of weeks ago and they were 300K. That might be why your Studio is not as bright as your Classic: the Classic might have 500K pots.

Also, pickups with more mids sound warmer. Your C5 does not seem to have as much midrange as the Custom or Custom Custom version of that same pickup.

The caps probably have little or nothing to do with your problem.

 

[Artie]

Re: CAPS? in a bright Les Paul Classic

I heard absolutely no tonal difference when switching between a .047 and .010 cap when the tone was on ten. It wasn't until the pot was turned down to 3 or so that a difference started to emerge.

Thats pretty interesting, and far from what I would've expected. I'll have to make the time to play around with this myself.

I do still have that DP24T rotary switch on the shelf. Thats a lot of different caps to switch! :laugh2:

 

[MattPete]

Re: CAPS? in a bright Les Paul Classic

Thats pretty interesting, and far from what I would've expected. I'll have to make the time to play around with this myself.

I do still have that DP24T rotary switch on the shelf. Thats a lot of different caps to switch! :laugh2:

I'm sure if you put it on a scope, you could see the difference between an .047 and .01 cap on ten. From my understanding, the cap acts like a knee on a low pass filter, with lower caps (i.e. .010) placing the knee at a higher Hz. So, maybe you'd get something like this:

Psychophysically, you might not be able to tell a difference when the pot is on 500k -- it's only at the lower resistances that you can tell.

On the other hand, I could be horribly wrong.

 

[KLINKDETROIT]

Re: CAPS? in a bright Les Paul Classic

Both the studio and the classic have 500k pots. Every pickup I put in the classic sounds brighter than other guitars I have tried it in. I tried a Patb1 and really liked it because the highs were very good sounding compared to the c5 but it seemd a little boxy and not as alive as others. I do however love the patb1 in my Ibanez 560. I ordered a tb6 and am hoping it works better as I tried a friends sh-6 pickup in my guitar and liked it. I hooked the tone back up and it helped get rid of some of the distantness and treble and added a little girth. I just want to get the right cap now. I used to have a 300k pot in the guitar but it seemed a little too masked like a hand over your mouth thing.

 

[KLINKDETROIT]

Re: CAPS? in a bright Les Paul Classic

How do you do the treble bleed thing?