VITAMIN Q Caps?
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John Wymore
New member
Re: VITAMIN Q Caps?
Pretty much my experience too. I sell Hovlands and Vitamin Q's but when customers ask what I recommend I always say go with the $.99 Orange Drops. The difference is minimal (which I think Lew pretty much proved in A/B testa a couple years ago) and in a live situation it can't be heard.
All CTS pots have a carbon path and anybody can order them with brass shafts and at 10% tolerance. The only thing unique about the RS pots is the taper as far as I can see. I would like to test his pots against a standard CTS sometime to see what the difference is.
Anybody willing to make a 2500 part order to CTS can get whatever spec they want, nothing magic about that. Wholesale price is probably around $2.00 each so it's a nice markup to sell them at $10.95!! This is not to say the taper on their pots isn't better than the stock taper, it very likely is but this is always subjective. The guitar world is full of hype!!
Pretty much my experience too. I sell Hovlands and Vitamin Q's but when customers ask what I recommend I always say go with the $.99 Orange Drops. The difference is minimal (which I think Lew pretty much proved in A/B testa a couple years ago) and in a live situation it can't be heard.
All CTS pots have a carbon path and anybody can order them with brass shafts and at 10% tolerance. The only thing unique about the RS pots is the taper as far as I can see. I would like to test his pots against a standard CTS sometime to see what the difference is.
Anybody willing to make a 2500 part order to CTS can get whatever spec they want, nothing magic about that. Wholesale price is probably around $2.00 each so it's a nice markup to sell them at $10.95!! This is not to say the taper on their pots isn't better than the stock taper, it very likely is but this is always subjective. The guitar world is full of hype!!
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gmacdonnell
New member
Re: VITAMIN Q Caps?
RS's regular pots aren't the standard CTS taper. They're modeled after the old Centralabs, and I even prefer them. I sold off the last of my vintage Centralabs last year, since I saw no reason to use them over a modern, more reliable and well-made pot.
Their Super Pots have a dramatically different taper from anything else I've tried on the market. It's far and away the best volume control I've ever used. It's completely predictable, with even roll-off between every number on your knob.
Hamer and PRS both have similar pots to the RS "Centralab" style pots, and both charge several times what RS does.
As far as their Super Pots, I usually grab them on sale for $6 or 7.
If anyone else made a better pot, at a cheaper (or even more expensive) price, I'd use it.
Maybe it's just me, but I can hear a quality PIO every time, and I certainly can hear the difference on stage or in a studio. I'm not a high-gain player, maybe that's part of it, but an engineer I do a lot of work for/with, Robert Honablue, (Santana, Benson, Zeppelin, Miles Davis, Johnny Cash- the guy is incredible!) asked me what I changed on my guitar, when I switched my Tele to poly & foil caps to test them. He told me to switch it back, fast.
RS's regular pots aren't the standard CTS taper. They're modeled after the old Centralabs, and I even prefer them. I sold off the last of my vintage Centralabs last year, since I saw no reason to use them over a modern, more reliable and well-made pot.
Their Super Pots have a dramatically different taper from anything else I've tried on the market. It's far and away the best volume control I've ever used. It's completely predictable, with even roll-off between every number on your knob.
Hamer and PRS both have similar pots to the RS "Centralab" style pots, and both charge several times what RS does.
As far as their Super Pots, I usually grab them on sale for $6 or 7.
If anyone else made a better pot, at a cheaper (or even more expensive) price, I'd use it.
Maybe it's just me, but I can hear a quality PIO every time, and I certainly can hear the difference on stage or in a studio. I'm not a high-gain player, maybe that's part of it, but an engineer I do a lot of work for/with, Robert Honablue, (Santana, Benson, Zeppelin, Miles Davis, Johnny Cash- the guy is incredible!) asked me what I changed on my guitar, when I switched my Tele to poly & foil caps to test them. He told me to switch it back, fast.
gmacdonnell
New member
Re: VITAMIN Q Caps?
And like I said before, if you don't hear a difference, or are happy the way things are, there's no need to play around with caps, pickup, etc.
There's no reason you can't buy a guitar off the rack and get great tone.
But with caps, it's a bit tricky, and counter-intuitive. For some players, ca p like an Orange Drop, might be too "perfect" electronically. It's designed to be a coupling cap, and it does that very well.
Whatever a cap sounds like as a coupling cap, it tends to show opposite characteristics as a shunt cap. The easiest example is Ceramics sound brittle and harsh as coupling caps, and as shunt caps they're muddy and ill-defined.
A guitar's circuit, though, using a shunt cap. For some players, the fact that PIO's are less transparent, when used as a shunt cap, makes for a fairly unique tone. It smooths out the signal, and to many people's ears, is more usable, even at extremely low settings. Instead of getting muddy, it gets a vocal growl, and leaves a bit of sparkle, (Clapton's early "woman" tone is a great example of this, or his "Beano" tone. Duane's rolled-off tones in the Fillmore recordings also show this.)
Like I said, for most people, this stuff is probably too small or subtle to really matter, especially if you use effects or overdrive and distortion.
For me, personally, I make a living with my guitar, and I'm playing constantly. I don't use effects or overdrive pedals, and I try to get all the sounds I need from just my guitar and amp. When I have PIO caps, that job is much easier, and the tone just sounds more "Right" to me.
It's as simple as that, that's why I use them.
And like I said before, if you don't hear a difference, or are happy the way things are, there's no need to play around with caps, pickup, etc.
There's no reason you can't buy a guitar off the rack and get great tone.
But with caps, it's a bit tricky, and counter-intuitive. For some players, ca p like an Orange Drop, might be too "perfect" electronically. It's designed to be a coupling cap, and it does that very well.
Whatever a cap sounds like as a coupling cap, it tends to show opposite characteristics as a shunt cap. The easiest example is Ceramics sound brittle and harsh as coupling caps, and as shunt caps they're muddy and ill-defined.
A guitar's circuit, though, using a shunt cap. For some players, the fact that PIO's are less transparent, when used as a shunt cap, makes for a fairly unique tone. It smooths out the signal, and to many people's ears, is more usable, even at extremely low settings. Instead of getting muddy, it gets a vocal growl, and leaves a bit of sparkle, (Clapton's early "woman" tone is a great example of this, or his "Beano" tone. Duane's rolled-off tones in the Fillmore recordings also show this.)
Like I said, for most people, this stuff is probably too small or subtle to really matter, especially if you use effects or overdrive and distortion.
For me, personally, I make a living with my guitar, and I'm playing constantly. I don't use effects or overdrive pedals, and I try to get all the sounds I need from just my guitar and amp. When I have PIO caps, that job is much easier, and the tone just sounds more "Right" to me.
It's as simple as that, that's why I use them.
Bezmotivnik
New member
Re: VITAMIN Q Caps?
I was very surprised to see this issue back on the SD forums after that. :scratchch
Yes, I thought this whole "magic tone capacitor" business was decisively and conclusively debunked by actual controlled experiments by technicians here a year or two back after a very long thread and blind-test .MP3s.
I was very surprised to see this issue back on the SD forums after that. :scratchch
uOpt
Something Cool
Re: VITAMIN Q Caps?
As mentioned earlier, given the right circumstances (as stated), I can tell blind.
You are welcome to stop by and flip the switch behind me.
Now, this doesn't change the fact that the difference is very small and there are usually more important things to worry about.
As mentioned earlier, given the right circumstances (as stated), I can tell blind.
You are welcome to stop by and flip the switch behind me.
Now, this doesn't change the fact that the difference is very small and there are usually more important things to worry about.
mudpuppy
New member
Re: VITAMIN Q Caps?
I've heard that an obscure group of natives in Peru is manufacturing hookup wire. I'm thinking of using it to rewire my vintage L5. The wire is hand-beaten from copper and insulated with a combination of natural latex and llama wool. My current setup is three Tube Screamers in series, followed by chorus, flanger, and reverb. I'm using a 100W Marshall head driving a 2 in. speaker from an old clock radio. How will this Peruvian hookup wire change my tone?
I've heard that an obscure group of natives in Peru is manufacturing hookup wire. I'm thinking of using it to rewire my vintage L5. The wire is hand-beaten from copper and insulated with a combination of natural latex and llama wool. My current setup is three Tube Screamers in series, followed by chorus, flanger, and reverb. I'm using a 100W Marshall head driving a 2 in. speaker from an old clock radio. How will this Peruvian hookup wire change my tone?
mudpuppy
New member
Re: VITAMIN Q Caps?
Seriously though, if you have the right equipment it's best not to even use to tone controls to filter out the treble end. This is especially true when recording with DI. With passive electronics the tone controls form a very primative and lame low-pass filter that is throwing away information from the pickups. Another problem is that unless you have active electronics you can't independently adjust the filtering for more than one pickup. If you properly gain stage your audio chain, you should have plenty of headroom do parametric EQ on the signal after it exits the guitar. For recording, the ideal situation is to record a separate track for each pickup, like with a stereo jack. These should be recorded clean, but you can run whatever FX you need on the monitor mix to help get a better performance. You can then do whatever EQ you like on the individual pickups, change pan positions, do pseudo-stereo comb filtering, stereo reverb, etc, etc. etc. The possibilities for over-engineering a mix are truely mind blowing. If you have a fast enough DAW (that you can depend on not to crash) you can even apply all of these techniques to live performance.
Seriously though, if you have the right equipment it's best not to even use to tone controls to filter out the treble end. This is especially true when recording with DI. With passive electronics the tone controls form a very primative and lame low-pass filter that is throwing away information from the pickups. Another problem is that unless you have active electronics you can't independently adjust the filtering for more than one pickup. If you properly gain stage your audio chain, you should have plenty of headroom do parametric EQ on the signal after it exits the guitar. For recording, the ideal situation is to record a separate track for each pickup, like with a stereo jack. These should be recorded clean, but you can run whatever FX you need on the monitor mix to help get a better performance. You can then do whatever EQ you like on the individual pickups, change pan positions, do pseudo-stereo comb filtering, stereo reverb, etc, etc. etc. The possibilities for over-engineering a mix are truely mind blowing. If you have a fast enough DAW (that you can depend on not to crash) you can even apply all of these techniques to live performance.
uOpt
Something Cool
Re: VITAMIN Q Caps?
Recording clean and adding overdrive/distortion later is very rarely done. The problem is that you play differently, your hands directly "play" with the distortion you hear.
David Gilmour is supposed to have done it, but in that case he plays while listening to one distorted sound and records both the clean and the distorted signal. Then you can take a good take (playing-wise) and mess with the exact distortion. I think it's safe to assume he just fine-tunes the original distorted track and doesn't completely start from the clean track.
And the amount of dynamics you deal with here is enormous. You can't do this with normal audio equipment.
Recording clean and adding overdrive/distortion later is very rarely done. The problem is that you play differently, your hands directly "play" with the distortion you hear.
David Gilmour is supposed to have done it, but in that case he plays while listening to one distorted sound and records both the clean and the distorted signal. Then you can take a good take (playing-wise) and mess with the exact distortion. I think it's safe to assume he just fine-tunes the original distorted track and doesn't completely start from the clean track.
And the amount of dynamics you deal with here is enormous. You can't do this with normal audio equipment.
Stratman
Guitaris Maximus
Re: VITAMIN Q Caps?
At 10, no difference.
Setting up your amp for the tone that the combination of guitar, pedal, and amp, no difference.
---
BUT
---
If you a guitar pplayer who really cares about his tone and therefore uses the tone knob on his guitar - One heck of a difference.
I read and laugh at people who post about pickups (Bridge and neck) and fail to realise that these pups can be controlled differently.
Now, having stated that FACT! These are a few players (Notice the difference between people and players) who post accurate information concerning what thay have found out and to those players - I tip my hat off to you all.
BTW - I do hear differences between 0 ~ 10 on the tone knob and use various high end caps.
At 10, no difference.
Setting up your amp for the tone that the combination of guitar, pedal, and amp, no difference.
---
BUT
---
If you a guitar pplayer who really cares about his tone and therefore uses the tone knob on his guitar - One heck of a difference.
I read and laugh at people who post about pickups (Bridge and neck) and fail to realise that these pups can be controlled differently.
Now, having stated that FACT! These are a few players (Notice the difference between people and players) who post accurate information concerning what thay have found out and to those players - I tip my hat off to you all.
BTW - I do hear differences between 0 ~ 10 on the tone knob and use various high end caps.
mudpuppy
New member
Re: VITAMIN Q Caps?
You certainly make some valid points. Another factor is that playing in front of a real amp and cab is going to give you subtle feedback effects, even if they're not recognizable as feedback (selectively increased sustain). One thing I want to clarify is that I'm not listening to a clean signal when I play. I'm listening to whatever amp sim and FX float my boat. Even though the track is recorded clean, I can reproduce what I originally heard by simply bringing up the saved presets I used while playing. We could argue all day about simulation vs. a real amp and cab, but I don't see much point in it. What I do works for me, but may be totally inappropriate for someone else. The point I was trying to make (poorly) is that with recording equipment so affordable, we shouldn't throw away what may be useful later. It seems that with the way we mic and track drum kits, guitarists deserve similar consideration. We need to allow for having some fun at the mixing board (or DAW), after all. Take, for example, guitar, wah, and tube amp: I would want to mic the speaker cab, maybe with more than one mic. I would also want to record tracks both pre-wah and post-wah. I will also admit that with DAWs, there's a huge temptation to over-engineer a mix. One gradually gets over that after a few years.
I'll stick by my guns re. the limitations of the tone controls with passive electronics: the tone controls don't filter the pickups independently, but serve as a single, shared R/C network when both pickups are selected.
You certainly make some valid points. Another factor is that playing in front of a real amp and cab is going to give you subtle feedback effects, even if they're not recognizable as feedback (selectively increased sustain). One thing I want to clarify is that I'm not listening to a clean signal when I play. I'm listening to whatever amp sim and FX float my boat. Even though the track is recorded clean, I can reproduce what I originally heard by simply bringing up the saved presets I used while playing. We could argue all day about simulation vs. a real amp and cab, but I don't see much point in it. What I do works for me, but may be totally inappropriate for someone else. The point I was trying to make (poorly) is that with recording equipment so affordable, we shouldn't throw away what may be useful later. It seems that with the way we mic and track drum kits, guitarists deserve similar consideration. We need to allow for having some fun at the mixing board (or DAW), after all. Take, for example, guitar, wah, and tube amp: I would want to mic the speaker cab, maybe with more than one mic. I would also want to record tracks both pre-wah and post-wah. I will also admit that with DAWs, there's a huge temptation to over-engineer a mix. One gradually gets over that after a few years.
I'll stick by my guns re. the limitations of the tone controls with passive electronics: the tone controls don't filter the pickups independently, but serve as a single, shared R/C network when both pickups are selected.
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