Pots and Caps

guitarhobbyist

Junior Member
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34
Hey all, I've decided to switch to the 500k pots for my strat project. I am using pickups that exhibit more bottom end than I thought. I have also read that .022 caps are prefered. Right now I am using a .050 cap that came with the kit. Stewmac sells .020 caps plus you get 12. Don't think I need twelve. Will this type of cap work? Its a 0.022µF 50V 10% metal film capacitor.

http://www.radioshack.com/search/index.jsp?kwCatId=&kw=0.022%20microfarad&origkw=0.022%20microfarad&sr=1

thanks again guys

 
Actually ol' bean, that is my favorite cap to use.

I've used: 

Orange drops - way overkill, large, expensive, but have very low ESR
Mallory 150's - also overkill, slightly less expensive, medium ESR
Ceramic caps - people poo-poo them, but they work, but have a high ESR
Oil and paper - ok for amps, overkill in guitars, VERY expensive
"Bumblebee" - just a Mallory 150 with a coating on it.  Same properties
Hovland - again ok for amps perhaps, but wasted on guitars, Very expensive, medium low ESR
Mylar film (them green ones) - sound as good as the "expensive" caps, cheap, medium low ESR... best value as they sound the same as those "boutique" caps.

Go for it!~ 

(Publc Service Advisory:  Surveys show that 95.6 percent of all doctors rectum-end Preparation-H)
 
-CB- said:
Ceramic caps - people poo-poo them, but they work, but have a high ESR

Ceramic values fluctuate more with temperature, at least more so than polymerized caps.  Am I wrong, CB?
 
Cant say on the temperature related fluctuations, thats something I've not looked into that for tone shaping caps on either guitars or amps.  I HAVE looked into what happens to electrolytic caps with temperature, after having them blow on a few ABIT motherboards (on the main processor power rails) and in the amps I've made.  Conclusion there is to overkill, since filters tend to run hot, and tubes are hot and well... heat is no good there.

But, for a guitar, or in the tone stack or coupling of amps... heat is not really a huge deal....

The ESR is a big deal, but again, really in amps more than guitars.  In amps, Orange Drops, to me, have that "JBL" tone.  Clarity, sparkly, tight.  Some say too bright, maybe even brittle.  The Mallory's are darker. 

As in resistive elements effecting the tone response, caps also have a resistive factor in their list of properties - the effective series resistance, or ESR.  With a resistor you can add "series resistance" to a circuit, not shunted to ground, and it will darken the tone by attenuating the high frequencies. This is due to resistors having an impedance property as well as a pure resistive property. Thats a trick to use in amp tweaking. 

Back to caps... In a tone control on a guitar though, we're not putting the signal through the capacitor, but shunting some of the signal to ground with it.  Normally we might say a value of X will have such and such db loss (say 6db) at frequency Y, when the inductive reactance of the pickup is Z (not factoring the additional capacitance of the guitar cord, or the loading of the controls, or loading of the input of the amp - generally pretty high impedance anyway).  In a guitar, the current flow is so minuscule that changes in things like ESR of a capacitor really don't have a huge effect on the attenuation of highs when the capacitor is used as a shunt to ground.  That is, the resistive property of the capacitor is not "holding back" some of the highs that normally would pass through to ground, because the current flow is beyond tiny and the IR drop in voltage doesn't amount to beans.  Hard to think of an IR drop through a capacitor but it is one thing that can be considered when the voltage level and current level are greater... as in amps.

In more plain English - the type of your capacitor generally doesn't do squat, unless you look at the extremes of secondary properties.  In amplifiers - tube amps - the type of capacitor seems to have a greater effect.  Not withstanding - there is also a thermal noise factor... that must also be accounted for, just like certain resistor types are thermally noisy.  Again, amp stuff, not guitar stuff.

Hope that helps.
 
In plain english (this is for guitar and bass) the lower the value of the cap. the more mid to high end range are allowed to pass through and less low end. Please correct me if I am wrong.
 
So would that be a big part as to why my sounds has more bottom end than I expected? I have a .050 cap right now. Does it play that much into it? Hard to believe a little cap would totally change everything engineers have put into creating these pickups.
 
if you were to take out the tone control altogether...no tone pot or cap in the circuit, your guitar wouldnt have any less low end than it does now. it might let more high frequencys through, making you precieve it as having less low end. 

the same could also be true of using a lower value cap in the tone control. This is what happend to me with my Epiphone Wilshire when i re-wired it with new electronics. The Wilshire is wired up like a Les Paul. I used the .047 cap and it sounded like total mud even with the tone controls all the way up so i changed it to a .022 and that fixed the problem.

Brian
 
Stuck in the Sixties said:
In plain english (this is for guitar and bass) the lower the value of the cap. the more mid to high end range are allowed to pass through and less low end. Please correct me if I am wrong.

You're wrong sort of, depending on the application.  As the value of the capacitor increases, the frequency of the signal that is "grounded out" through the capacitor gets lower.  In effect, you get first the upper highs, then mids, then even lower notes grounded out (reduced almost completely) as the value of the capacitor goes up.

Why don't we get ALL the frequency grounded out?  Two main reasons (there are other reasons) - one is the ESR thing, the other is the 6db per octave slope to the filter created.
 
guitarhobbyist said:
So would that be a big part as to why my sounds has more bottom end than I expected? I have a .050 cap right now. Does it play that much into it? Hard to believe a little cap would totally change everything engineers have put into creating these pickups.

The bottom is created by the pickups.  The capacitor will shove highs into ground (canceling them from getting to the amp). 

The capacitor really only effects the tone - WHEN the tone control is not set to fully off (no high cut used).  Yes... there is some minor work of the cap even when "fully treble"... very very minor.  VERY (usually, for moderate output pickups)
 
Hmm.. was just about to order those pots. Should I just replace the cap first and see what that does or should I change out the pots as well? Any suggestions?
 
neither will effect the bottom end of things... what you need to do is lower the pickups....

or

a trick you can do is to run a pickup "in series" with a capacitor.  the selection is critical, but you can take the bottom out of any pickup that way.  you can make a HB sound exactly like a SC (shhh its true!), and it works on heavy bottom end pickups the best.  Just add a capacitor between the pickup "hot" lead and the place that hot lead is connected.  Try a .022 or .033 or .047  In this case, the smaller capacitor will give you less bottom end, and it works fine.

or

use a Lawrence Q filter - an humbucking 1.8Hy low impedance inductor.  These can be wired to a tone control pot with a limiting resistor and cut the bottom out in a variable way that is VERY sweet, and can actually give you some "acoustic" tones as well

or

that trick plus a capacitor instead of the resistor - that will more of a mid/bottom filter  try  something like .01 or even .005


Personally for heavy bottom pickups the second suggestion is the best, as its variable and who knos you might want more bottom sometimes, and less at other times

You can keep the strat wired such that both tone controls work all the time.  One with the inductor to cut the bottom, one with a .022 cap to cut the top

Q filters are $20 plus $4.50 shipping at bill lawrences site
 
Some Fender Fat 50's. They had good reviews and were on sale. Gonna try changing the cap and the cap in series if it needs it after that. Looked into the Q-filter on the Bill Lawrence, but hey, for $40 I may change out the pickups altogether.
 
WAIT ONE.... I've used Fat 50s on a couple of builds and never had any "too much bottom" issues. BEFORE you heat up that soldering iron, spend some time adjusting the pickup height relative to the strings:

1.) If the pickup is too close to the strings, you aren't going to get the proper sound out of the pickups.
2.) Note that to get the desired sound, the pickup height adjustment for the body of the pickup will NOT necessarily be exactly parallel to the pickguard, i.e., if you're getting too much bottom, try moving the pickup DOWN at the 6th string side.

There are a number of varibles involved here to include string gauge, and no one "perfect" PU height adjustment setting. Experiment with this and you may will get the sound evened out without replacing the pots or cap(s) on your axe.


 
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