Luxe Woman tone bumblebee caps

Re: Luxe Woman tone bumblebee caps

$68 bucks for a pair of caps.

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Re: Luxe Woman tone bumblebee caps

Agileguy_101 said:
$68 bucks for a pair of caps.
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I agree. Pure snake oil. The sad thing is, since no one will ever actually hear the difference, they could just take cheap ceramic discs, and mount them in a fancy covering. No one is likely to cut apart their $70 cap to see whats inside.
 
Re: Luxe Woman tone bumblebee caps

IIRC Gibson was actually doing that for a while with their $100 pair of historic reissue bumblebee caps. People got really pisssed really quick.

I spent $10 on a PIO cap that I put in my strat last week. It sounds really good and I would probably do it again, but I can't imagine how a cap could get any better than that. I mean, it's just a damn capacitor!
 
Re: Luxe Woman tone bumblebee caps

Agileguy_101 said:
I mean, it's just a damn capacitor!
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And its controlling the part of the signal that you throw away. Somewhere, around here, is the test I did with a $22 Hoveland and a cheap ceramic disc, (along with a couple others). I could hear no difference between any of them. But some people say they do. I guess that's what counts.

I also want to clarify, high-end caps do make a difference when used in series in the audio path. Such as, in interstage coupling. But I don't think they matter in passive tone controls.
 
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Re: Luxe Woman tone bumblebee caps

In a tone control the type of cap makes 0 difference. The value and tolerance do. A measured .022 ceramic and a .022 unobtanium dielectric, unicorn horn, solid silver wire cap will sound the same because they're both .022

Granted, a cheap ceramic disk will have a lower tolerance and are usually a hit or miss situation with values being consistent...
 
Re: Luxe Woman tone bumblebee caps

Buyer beware
New BumbleBee caps are just Wesco 32M polyester film/foil capacitors in a BumbleBee shell. All Gibson and others do is test them for consistent value. Wesco 32M caps are $4.25 for 3.

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Also, I did tests with two different versions of Vitamin Q PIO, Sprague Orange Drop, Silver Mylar, Black Bees, cheap mylar/foil, Fender Ceramic and Mylar caps and cheap ceramic disc caps. I measured all to be within 10% of spec. All of them produced the same sound in the tone circuit of a guitar, except the higher value caps produced slightly darker tone, as would be expected.

The exception was the cheap ceramics. When measured, cheap ceramic caps never put out a consistent value over time. Not sure the correlation, but in a guitar tone circuit, they muddied the sound rather than just darken it. Somehow transient detail of the sound was getting lost. So I would not recommend the cheapest ceramic disc. But you only need to go a step up from that and you are good. Sprague Orange Drops are affordable, stable and produce the correct tone characteristics in an audio circuit. PIO will degrade over time, so the expense isn't worth it unless you just want bragging rights that you have the traditional components.
 
Re: Luxe Woman tone bumblebee caps

I've been reading a lot that old radios might have caps in them that are good for tone, is this true? might be better off just buying old electronics from a flea market and maybe get lucky :) I've also seen these Jensen silver foil caps I wonder how they compare. I've tested quite a few different brand of capacitors and the difference in sound is small, but worth it to someone who loves their project guitar/s :) To me the old Russian paper in oil caps sound fanTASTic. But I don't know how consistent they are over time. That being said, I think the Orange Drops are a great tone, for a Great price, balancing quality/price they are the way to go IMHO.

"A man told his son, there are two wolves fighting inside of you son, one fights for love and the other fights for hate. The young boy asked, which one will win? His father replied, the one you feed."
 
Re: Luxe Woman tone bumblebee caps

I go with snake oil too. If 2 caps are measured the same, electronically, it doesn't matter what they are made out of . They simply don't affect the signal, like something like pickups do. Lots of money to be made with people who don't know enough about electronics though.
 
Re: Luxe Woman tone bumblebee caps

My dad worked as an electrician his whole life, and designed all sorts of circuits and wiring schemes for my guitars over the years for fun and to spend time with me.

He straight up laughed in my face when I tried to tell him that Gibson were reissuing their 'historic' bumblebee cap for 112 dollars. He said he'd buy a few hundred caps for the same price, wrap them in some paper and gladly sell them back for 100 bucks, with absolutely no difference to what you were getting.
 
Re: Luxe Woman tone bumblebee caps

WhoGivesAPluck said:
I've been reading a lot that old radios might have caps in them that are good for tone, is this true? might be better off just buying old electronics from a flea market and maybe get lucky :) I've also seen these Jensen silver foil caps I wonder how they compare. I've tested quite a few different brand of capacitors and the difference in sound is small, but worth it to someone who loves their project guitar/s :) To me the old Russian paper in oil caps sound fanTASTic. But I don't know how consistent they are over time. That being said, I think the Orange Drops are a great tone, for a Great price, balancing quality/price they are the way to go IMHO.

"A man told his son, there are two wolves fighting inside of you son, one fights for love and the other fights for hate. The young boy asked, which one will win? His father replied, the one you feed."
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When it comes to a guitar tone circuit, the reason it doesn't matter what type of capacitor and only the electronic value matters is because audio is not passing through it to your output. In a guitar tone circuit, a portion of the signal is being leaked to ground through it and therefore removed from the audio that is going to the output.

The only reason to care about the type of cap would be how long it lasts (old paper in oil caps dry out, which changes their value, which in turn changes their effectiveness as a tone cap.)
 
Re: Luxe Woman tone bumblebee caps

^ Well given that the signal that goes through the cap is subtracted from the signal that goes to the amp, I'd say it would matter a whole heap actually.

There have been a few oscilloscope test by members of here and MLP, indicating a subtle change in harmonic content with different cap dielectric material.
 
Re: Luxe Woman tone bumblebee caps

AlexR said:
^ Well given that the signal that goes through the cap is subtracted from the signal that goes to the amp, I'd say it would matter a whole heap actually.

There have been a few oscilloscope test by members of here and MLP, indicating a subtle change in harmonic content with different cap dielectric material.
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Without seeing the test setup or the results, I would posit that the dielectric difference resulted in a different electronic value of the cap, or that the test scenario introduced other factors that were influential on harmonic content. But, I am open to be persuaded otherwise if all factors in the test were absolutely controlled and only the dielectric material was the difference. Could you post a link to the other discussion please? I am interested in reading this. I'm not forever firmly in the camp that there is absolutely no difference, it's just all my tests have conformed to only the value of the cap mattering.
 
Re: Luxe Woman tone bumblebee caps

beaubrummels said:
Without seeing the test setup or the results, I would posit that the dielectric difference resulted in a different electronic value of the cap, or that the test scenario introduced other factors that were influential on harmonic content. But, I am open to be persuaded otherwise if all factors in the test were absolutely controlled and only the dielectric material was the difference. Could you post a link to the other discussion please? I am interested in reading this. I'm not forever firmly in the camp that there is absolutely no difference, it's just all my tests have conformed to only the value of the cap mattering.
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There's plenty of videos on youtube of caps with the same values being tested. All wired to a switch on a board outside of the guitar, flip the switch, switch caps. the sound is different. Not much, but no one said it would be, but yes the sound is different. I thought everyone already knew this...
 
Re: Luxe Woman tone bumblebee caps

I've seen these videos before, but I would need to see that the caps are exactly the same. I know they may be rated the same, but they can be off as much as 20%. You would need a capacitance meter to test, and one that is extremely accurate. Only the value of a cap should matter, not what it is made out of- electrically, it does the same thing, no matter what it is made out of. I wonder if the videos are done by people actually selling expensive caps - or affiliated with them.
 
Re: Luxe Woman tone bumblebee caps

WhoGivesAPluck said:
There's plenty of videos on youtube of caps with the same values being tested. All wired to a switch on a board outside of the guitar, flip the switch, switch caps. the sound is different. Not much, but no one said it would be, but yes the sound is different. I thought everyone already knew this...
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This is exactly the test I have already done. The difference comes from the value of the cap. Any electrical component has a tolerance in manufacture, typically 20%. (You pay extra for 10%.) When I did my tests, I confirmed all the caps wired in were within 10% and the only difference was caused by the higher value within that 10% range.
 
Re: Luxe Woman tone bumblebee caps

I know Freefrog has done some tests - I was hoping maybe he'd show up in a thread like this.
Certainly he has posted the graphs on MLP, but I can't remember the heading of the thread to do a search.

What I would say is that any effects are subtle. It something where you have to know the rig and guitar you are listening to in order to tell.
 
Re: Luxe Woman tone bumblebee caps

beaubrummels said:
New BumbleBee caps are just Wesco 32M polyester film/foil capacitors in a BumbleBee shell.
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I suspected this back in post #3. I think this is the most important part of this thread. Go ahead and buy "better" caps, if you want. But don't spend more than a couple bucks. If that.

WhoGivesAPluck said:
. . . but yes the sound is different. I thought everyone already knew this...
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The thing is, some of us have done the test for themselves. In my case, I work in a Navy cal lab. I've got the equipment and environmental conditions to this right. I bought one expensive Hoveland cap. I was then able to pick through bins of Orange Drops and ceramics to match them to the Hoveland exactly. (Probably to 1% or better.) I mounted them on an expensive mil-spec rotary switch. I couldn't hear a difference. I still have that switch. I may rerun the test just to check myself out.

AlexR said:
What I would say is that any effects are subtle. It something where you have to know the rig and guitar you are listening to in order to tell.
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I would agree with this. But I'd still say that no one need spend more than a buck or two on passive guitar tone circuits.

Btw, did anyone else see, or hear, any test clips on that site selling the expensive caps? I didn't. You'd think they'd post some.
 
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