Noticed no difference between .02 and .04 caps...

[wasteofo2]

My sg has an old Gibson PAF replica in the neck and a lil' 59 in the bridge (not being used in my strat right now, and I had no good bring HB). They're both a bit bright, so I decided to change the caps on the tone pot from .02 to .04.

Before I got the PAF replica in my sg's neck, it came with some low quality stock humbucker that sounded muddy and unusable, the tone pot's cap was .02. I changed it to .01 and the pickup opened up quite a bit and became alot less muddy, and even got a bit of a crunch to it. So I figured, .02 to .04 would be plenty to tame these pickups, perhaps it'd even be too much and make them muddy.

When I changed to .04, I noticed no difference at all. I recorded clips of me playing through the lil' 59 with no cap on the tone pot, a .02 with the knob at 10, a .02 with the knob at 5, a .04 with the knob at 10 and a .04 with the knob at 5. When played back, the no tone cap, and both values of caps set at 10 sounded the same, as well as both values of caps set at 5 sounding the same.

If I can just figure out how to merge seperate tracks into 1 on Cool Edit Pro 2.0, I'll post the clips as an mp3 to show the lack of any differences between them.

Incase it matter, the .02 was film and the .04 was ceramic. I've heard of people claiming different types of caps sound better etc. but I don't think that the difference between film and ceramic would make .02 and .04 sound the same...

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: Noticed no difference between .02 and .04 caps...

There is a diff tho. The larger value cap, .04, will allow more upper mids to pass to ground when you turn the tone control down. The smaller cap, .02, will block those upper mids and allow only higher frequencies to pass to ground when you turn the tone control down. With your tone control on 10 you may notice no difference. Lew

 

[wasteofo2]

Re: Noticed no difference between .02 and .04 caps...

But then at 5, I should have heard a difference, right?

I apparently misunderstood caps, I thought the higher value cap sent more high frequencies to the ground on all settings, and the lower value caps sent less high frequencies to the ground on all settings. Are you saying that different value caps actually send a different range of frequencies to the ground?

 

[Stevo]

Re: Noticed no difference between .02 and .04 caps...

On an audio taper pot, position 5 is not 50%, due to a logarithmic scale. I think it's more like 10% at that point.

Yes, different caps affect different frequencies. They are used for bandpassing and bandstopping when used with inductors. The values determine the bands (frequency ranges) that are affected.

Large values are used for filtering, taking all frequencies and flattening them to make DC. Maybe that will help you remember the difference between larger and smaller values, considering the extremes.

 

[wasteofo2]

Re: Noticed no difference between .02 and .04 caps...

Stevo, are you saying not noticing any difference between a .02 and .04 cap is a normal thing? How would that explain the huge difference I heard between a .02 and .01 cap?

When I come to think of it, I actually realized different caps affected different frequencies, but I thought that the higher the value it got, the range of frequencies sent to the ground just got larger, sending lower and lower frequencies to the ground. How I interpereted Lew's post was that the range is always the same, and different caps just move that range around, grounding the frequencies from x-y and letting anything lower than x or higher than y through.

 

[Stevo]

Re: Noticed no difference between .02 and .04 caps...

Stevo, are you saying not noticing any difference between a .02 and .04 cap is a normal thing? How would that explain the huge difference I heard between a .02 and .01 cap?

I was making a point that a 50% rotation does not mean 50% resistance on an audio taper pot, and that may be a factor when determining how much capacitance you are adding.

To determine actual bandpass or bandstop, you need to use trig functions and factor in the inductance also.

I refuse to argue about capacitors :argue:

I don't worry about it and I use .022 caps for everything

 

[wasteofo2]

Re: Noticed no difference between .02 and .04 caps...

Sorry if I sounded argumentative, I'm just trying to understand why I heard what I heard.

 

[Stevo]

Re: Noticed no difference between .02 and .04 caps...

Sorry if I sounded argumentative, I'm just trying to understand why I heard what I heard.

No you didn't sound argumentative.. it's just a little joke about how anal some discussions can get

 

[MattPete]

Re: Noticed no difference between .02 and .04 caps...

I wasn't sure what caps I wanted to use on my guitar, so last night I hooked up a push-pull tone pot with .047 and .01 caps (down for .047, and up for .01). With the tone on 10, I'd be hard pressed to tell a difference. Even at 5, it was hard to tell a difference. When I mean hard to tell a difference, I mean the difference was so subtle as to be insignificant.

To me it wasn't until I set the tone in the 1-2 position where I could really tell a difference. At that point, the difference became enormous (500k audio taper pot, BTW). The .047 sounded muddy, whereas the the .01 just seemed to roll of the highs, and produced a nice nasal sound instead. To me, the .01 was much more useful.

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: Noticed no difference between .02 and .04 caps...

I wasn't sure what caps I wanted to use on my guitar, so last night I hooked up a push-pull tone pot with .047 and .01 caps (down for .047, and up for .01). With the tone on 10, I'd be hard pressed to tell a difference. Even at 5, it was hard to tell a difference. When I mean hard to tell a difference, I mean the difference was so subtle as to be insignificant.

To me it wasn't until I set the tone in the 1-2 position where I could really tell a difference. At that point, the difference became enormous (500k audio taper pot, BTW). The .047 sounded muddy, whereas the the .01 just seemed to roll of the highs, and produced a nice nasal sound instead. To me, the .01 was much more useful.

Excellant! Well done...that's the only way to tell what you like. That's the way I do it too and the way I learned what I learned about caps. I use the smaller cap values like .02 or .01 because I like that "woman tone" when I roll the tone control WAY down...that's the same thing you're doing. Lew