Oh man, I’ve been wanting to do this test for ages! A direct comparison between capacitor types in a standard guitar tone circuit.
So who’s right? The Tone Illuminati who discern dramatic tone improvements after installing vintage/audiophile caps? Or skeptics who say those perceptions are delusional? Does cap type matter at all?
You tell me.
Anyone hear anything I don’t?
UPDATE:
[Image from BBC innit.]
What's your opinion on differences between those caps in a stompbox, where they're dealing with higher voltages?
Also, do you have exact measurements on the values of those four capacitors?
I’m equally skeptical about stompbox circuits, and I HAVE tested that before. I built two simple circuits with sockets for the caps and measured the results. In a way, that was more conclusive, because I was able to use a ReAmp to run the exact audio through each version, something I can’t do here for obvious reasons. I also ran software analyses of the multiple recordings. It’s posted at freestompboxes.org in the members-only area. (Joining is free — and you should join, ’cause it’s great little community.) Search for “Joe Gore’s Reasonably Scientific Capacitor Test.”
I’m not saying there are no differences whatsoever. I can’t hear any myself, but I know that many listeners have keener ears than I do (stating with my musician wife). But I am confident that any differences are sufficiently subtle that any of a hundred other variables easily overshadows them.
Good to hear. I’ve been using mostly ceramics in my pedal builds, but I’m going to switch to film, I think — not for any inherent superiority in tone, but because the films I’ve tried have been muuuuuuch closer to spec than the ceramics. In particular I had a whale of a time finding any 68nF ceramics that were anywhere near 68nF — the lowest of them was 79nF and the highest was 96nF. At some point I’m going to get tired of measuring all my capacitors, so it’ll be good to use ones that I trust to be basically at the right value.
Bravo Joe!!
Here’s the thing, in an amp or an effect, the signal often passes through the cap. In a guitar tone control circuit the only signal being passed through the cap is then being shunted to ground! So you don’t hear it. That’s the high frequency content.
Also, when the tone control is on 10 the cap is acting like a piece is wire, so you are only hearing the resistance of the pot. The reason for this is as you turn down the tone control pot from ten, the major effect is changing the resistive loading on the resonant circuit. This is because the impedance of the capacitor in the range of the resonance is a lot less than the pot value. As the pot gets closer to zero, the capacitor becomes important, but the initial effect is just resistive loading.
So the talk I hear when people put paper-in-oil caps in their guitars, and claim is sounds “better” when the control is on 10 than the film (Orange drop) or ceramic caps did are experiencing the placebo effect. 🙂 Reminds of of how Gibson was selling FAKE Bumble Bee caps for $50 a pair, that were really $0.049 polyester film caps in a repro Bumble Bee shell. And I’m sure everyone thought they sounded great. Same with the well known expensive “hand made” PIO caps. They are also fake. You can find photos of them dissected on the Interwebs.
So, as long as the caps have the same value, and you would have to measure them to confirm that, they should all sound the same.
I actually did hear a difference, though it was very slight. At all three settings I thought 3 sounded fuller and 4 more dynamic, but again, only very, very slightly so. Seems unlikely that the degree of difference I heard, if it was indeed more than just variation in playing, would be something that would be noticeable in any practical playing situation. Also, full disclosure, both my wife and my students think I have bat ears (in sensitivity terms, not shape!), so on that purely anecdotal and totally unscientific note, I might actually be more sensitive than most. But still, there’s nothing I heard that would justify the cost of the “good stuff” over the standard cheapies.
I don’t doubt you, Erik — I know many people who hear things I can’t, and that’s not even taking into account the natural decline in my middle-aged hearing. My argument isn’t that there’s no difference — just that any differences are so subtle as to be inconsequential.
I am with you Joe and I have a pretty good ear for the most part.Besides the facts ,people will still say the same things that they believe to be true. You can convince yourself of anything ! The amount of difference is so minimal it could be all in the angle of your fingers striking the strings , or how hard you hit them.Best luthier I ever met in my life uses ceramic caps , decent ones that are within that 10% range. He doesn’t go for none of that B.S.
Yes, you can convince yourself of anything! It’s incredibly difficult to compare similar recordings. Our perceptions vary so much according to mood, fatigue, and wishful thinking.
I agree- not a difference, or if there is, not an amount that would actually matter. I wonder if a higher gained-up tone would bring out some details?
Joe! SHHHH!!! you’re going to tank the industry and put yourself out of a job if you keep shedding light on all the marketing BS. Rock gods forbid that the secret of the axechemists be disclosed to the masses. That being the trunk of a tree, some string, and actual practice. If you ever did a video showing how many tones you can get from a static guitar setup using only variations of finger and pick technique, every NOS component, SHARC processor, and all gear stamped with the words classic, vintage, reissue, and relic would spontaneously combust.
Hee hee. I swear, a millimeter variation in fingernail length is more noticeable than this stuff. 🙂
actually, I’d describe that more as a beanie than a cap.
(sorry, but couldn’t resist) 🙂
I find that when the hair on my knuckles (particularly the left hand) reach a certain length that the speed at which I can play is hindered. I used to wax. Now I am contemplating electrolysis because I’ve heard that the electrical charge actually stays in your body for a period of time and you can transfer that electrical mojo to all your gear simply by plugging in a playing Purple Haze until exhaustion hits. Of course, this may disrupt the current flowing through those caps.
Hee hee. Mark is such a great player, it’s probably true! 🙂
Awesome Joe Gore. Thanks for taking on some of this ToneLore® stuff. You prove once again that fingers and ears are the best bits of a guitar rig. #guitartone
Aww, thanks, Kord! 🙂
Old vintage caps are well known to be leaky lossy with terrible tollerences. That adds to their charm, and tone some say. As for in stomp boxes etc, yes many of us pedal mod guys change the caps in “active” tone circuits but not because we feel the old ones sounded bad, although some cheap ones do, much of the time its more for ajdusting bandwidth in the circuit and for stability. Sometimes we do change them just because they are detrimental to a quality tone but more often its a value adjustment vs just swapping out for the same cap value in a different brand etc. this usually allows either more or less bass in a circuit depending on what you are looking for. In most cases in a passive guitar tone circuit where you are basically shunting the highs to ground, the value is more important than who made it and when (all else being the same in values and type)
But wouldn’t the only perceptible change between a modern and vintage cap be a variance in value, not timbre? Perhaps slightly more or less treble-cut in the maximum position, but not any audible difference in tone quality?
But a leaky cap would be the same as a resistor in parallel with the cap. That will load down the pickups and make them sound darker.
Glad you did this test, Joe. I’ve been kicking it around for years, but never had enough motivation. When I replace a cap in a guitar, I usually go for robustness, paying a little more for something that doesn’t look like it will fall apart if the guitar gets bashed around. Microfarads are microfarads, so I can’t see why there’d be much difference, especially if the tolerance is 10%. I’m sure Leo Fender didn’t choose caps for anything more than price and basic performance, nor I’m sure, did most other manufacturers. Ever. When I build stomp boxes, I tend to go for higher-grade caps, which is probably overkill, although I heard, years ago, that using closer-tolerance caps and resistors (as in 1%) helps to keep noise down. Again, I’ve never tested this, so your assignment, Mr. Phelps, should you choose it, would be to undertake a snipe hunt of that sort. Thanks for the insight, Joe! (As always.)
Tom taught me everything I know back when I was a cub reporter for Guitar Player. So if folks have issues with anything I write, take it up with him. 😉
It’s so refreshing to see a logical view at something that is very simple. Somebody at your YouTube clip already commented that the audio signal doesn’t pass through these capacitors, only frequencies that go to ground. There could be small differences between what goes out of the signal, but in practice a cheapo cap could cut frequencies more to someone’s liking than a more expensive one.
I would add that it depends on the circuit; in a guitar, the signal does not go through the cap itself, but in a stompbox sometimes the signal does actually go through the cap, so it makes more sense that the type could matter. The particular way it may matter could also be in the noise level or phase coherency rather than subjective sound quality, so it's worth taking that that into account in these comparisons. The question is really "are they different in performance" rather than the more narrow "are they different in tone".
I have not tested this in fx pedals but I have heard a very significant difference in a solid state preamp that uses (just) one cap in the signal path – a Universal Audio 1108. However, this was a change from an electrolytic to a non electrolytic type, which is a more fundamental change than going from one type of non electrolytic small signal cap to another. Also a mic preamp has a LOT more high frequency response than what comes out of a guitar speaker, like 3 or 4 times the amount of the overall spectrum, so there is a lot more space where a difference could be evident.
Thank you, Joe!
We cannot overstress that if what you’re hearing is going through a capacitor whether it’s a DC blocking coupling cap or is part of an active EQ circuit, then the type and quality of the cap does matter sonically.
But…in a passive treble bleed guitar low pass R/C tone control? It just doesn’t matter. Unless, that is, you prefer to listen with your eyes and not your ears.
These are hugely different uses for capacitors. One is about what you hear; the other is about what you don’t hear. These issues are not the same!
If Rick Turner says it’s true … it’s true! 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Turner_(luthier)
Well, I don’t mean to offend your esteemed guest, but I beg to differ. Suppose your capacitor had the nasty attribute of a diode junction across it. Even though it is a “shunt” component and your signal isn’t going “through” it, it is sure the heck having an effect on your signal. That’s an extreme example, but supposing your capacitor has some other non linearity such as capacitance changing with voltage. This will cause distortion. Whether series or shunt it can affect your signal.
In general, at the voltages we deal with in guitars, these effects are really small and so the discussion can be filed under pedantic.
There is actually a component called a “varactor” which is a voltage-variable capacitor formed from a diode junction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varicap
We are talking about freaking passive guitar wiring circuits here, aren’t we.
You’re right, as usual I’m being a putz. Rick’s conclusion is “it doesn’t matter”, and I’d agree.
Rick Turner knows his stuff!
Some of Rick’s early work involved low impedance pickups, which gave a flatter frequency response (I presume, by moving the resonant peak up in frequency out of the range of interest). Were you to develop a standard pot/cap tone control for this, you’d reduce the value of the pot, and increase the value of the cap. Perhaps so much that you’d be tempted to use an electrolytic, which (as far as I can tell) acts like a diode when the polarity is reversed. Would this not be noticeable?
Side note – I think the Alembic instruments also used active electronics, so perhaps this was not an issue there.
Extra putz points – I think it would be cool if varactors could be adapted for use in tone controls, as you’d finally be able to get a smoothly moving corner frequency that currently requires multi-caps on a rotary switch. But I think in general that the varactor’s value is too small compared to normal tone circuit caps.
Thanks Joe – feeling better already about the cap job I had done on an bf Fender Deluxe. When it first came back from the shop they had replaced way more caps than I thought and it made me sick (the amp is pristine). But it still sounded great to me.
That happened to me years ago, when I was too young and chicken to squawk: I took my ’52 Deluxe in for work, and the “tech” added a bunch of unrequested mods. I was too naive to realize he replaced a lot of original parts with cheap modern ones.
Now throw them in some amps as coupling caps…That’s the real one I’d like to see addressed.
Mark Milano I posted a similar experiment (with similar results) using simple stompbox circuits in the members section at freestompboxes.org. I found no meaningful differences between caps of different materials—even the all-important input cap position. And I feel those results were even more conclusive, since I was able to do the tests using a ReAmp—the audio material was identical for each cap, and not subject to variations in touch, as is the case here. You need to join freestompboxes to see results. (Which everyone into DIY stompboxes should do, 'cause it's free, and it's a cool little community.) Search for "Joe Gore's Reasonably Scientific Capacitor Test."
Well even if there was a bigger difference who's to say the values aren't different unless you have a bridge type meter to measure the capacitances of each.
Yeah, but more exact capacitance values would have no bearing on my main point: It doesn’t frickin’ matter.
Fascinating. I actually heard a difference. To me, 2 and 4 sounded less woofy when the tone was completely rolled off. The cheapest and the most expensive – ha.
not rolled off the #1 had less mid than the other 3.
Hmm — this is easy for me to say, since I played the examples — but the spectral variations you guys discern are SO well within the range of variation between performances. They’re also (in the case of the rolled-off example) well within the range of unit-to-unit variation. Changing my angle of attack by a few degrees would have a greater bearing on the results.
I don’t doubt that some folks can hear slight differences between the performances, including ones I can’t perceive myself.
But I’m not an electrical engineer attempting to prove a theorem. (“Cap material has absolutely zero sonic ramifications in passive R/C tone circuits.”) I’m a guitarist making an aesthetic argument, and my attitude is more like, “If you think there are meaningful musical ramifications here, you reside in a galaxy far, far away from mine.”
:pity:
Johnny, not rolled off shouldn’t have any effect at all. The cap is pretty much out of the circuit.
Y’know, I’m really glad you put this video together.
I’ve done a lot of rewiring projects for myself and friends. When it comes to the tone cap, I open up my parts draw of assorted capacitors that I bought at various times and places. I then rumage around until I find a nice looking one with the value I want to use. If asked about it afterwards, I just tell people I used a “specially selected” tone cap for the project. I don’t feel guilty about it. I did select the one I used “just for this guitar.” I mean, I could have grabbed another. Or picked an ugly one.
To date, everybody I’ve done this for has absolutely loved what I selected.
The power of the human imagination is a wonderful thing. I’m not ashamed to work with that when the occasion requires. And life is far to short to indulge in endless discussions about things that have little or no basis in reality.
Thanks for validating a conclusion about tone caps I reached a long time ago. One of the reasons I have so many in my parts drawer is because I decided to test it myself back when. To bad so many only came in bags of 5 or 10. :-))
Hahaha, thank God somebody made this video, love the constant eye rolling!
Hee hee. Bill, I roll me eyes like that even when I’m not being sarcastic.
Good to see others taking on comparisons with more carefully laid out controls. I don’t know if you’ve seen these videos I did about a year ago (awfully long, and rather boring to be honest), but I presented comparisons in a viewer-participation double blind test.
https://youtu.be/817JHiYV_Po
https://youtu.be/M7Hu52vmxE0
Same results of course, and I’ve done lots more comparisons with different caps, rigs, and players. The results have always been the same as yours. Thanks for showing this. Of course it won’t change any minds that are already made up…
Awesome, David! Thanks for sharing those.
Thanks for this! I thought Cap #3 sounded slightly (ever-so slightly) darker and woolier, but totally within a reasonable 10% difference. Wait, it was way less than 10%, more like "barely perceptible, maybe I'm just kidding myself."
I notice that the better I get the better all the caps sound in my guitars.
Hee hee. Thanks for saying that! Learning to strike the string with, say, 5% more sensitivity and variation would be a thousand times more meaningful than any magic cap.
Oh, and this:
Thanks Joe… another enjoyable and interesting video.There’s spo many people out there trying to convince us to part with our cash by selling ‘snake oil’ – which makes it much more difficult so things like this I think are just great.
I have done similar things (like EdK – prev poster) with Cap’s in guitars / HiFi & Audio and usually any differences are SO SO SO slight that they could be put down to effects of volume change / difference in listening position or even Mood or expectation / variance in room acoustics or changes to the set up however minute – any testing with instruments has usually shown nothing. I tend to be open minded and quite prepared to alter an opinion when I see / hear something that I would consider convincing / reasoned / supported by real data.
I have yet to see anyone give me convincing arguments regarding such things as HOW Capacitor types affects tone / point to point is better than pcb / directional speaker cables / special power leads etc etc
Even the whole does ‘tone’ wood affect solid body electric guitar sound tosh – weirdly all have absolute die hard adherents one way or the other….when most of the time as Joe proves doing the test for yourself is easy These things are usually part myth part accepted wisdom and part marketing (aka BS to get your money)
I could see a valid argument being made that point to point wiring on tube amps might be able to take more shock and vibration before falling apart than PCBs.
Here’s an example of a guy who tried to prove that one cap is superior to others (not a blind test, of course). It’s amazing who humans get influenced with other senses when they try to assess only one. Funnily, for a cap he for whatever reason he didn’t like (could be the colour, name, country of manufacture, reviews from other “experts”,…) he claimed that the sustain was about half way of the good one and that it stopped, while to me it sounded exactly like the “good” one and the thing was still obviously ringing when according to him it stopped. He also tried to back his “research” by explaining that the caps influenced the tone through charging and discharging 🙂 etc.; the poor soul doesn’t even understand the very basics how guitar circuits work.
Here’s his scientific research project:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQcmYvpjx7s
Well, caps do influence the tone by charging and discharging. That said, I agree this guy is in serious snake oil territory.
There’s a little bit of grit in the amp tone, and that being after the tone control, we need to remember that not all harmonics come from the guitar itself.
The thing that bugs me the most about these things is total lack of respect for the experimental method. Just by moving my strumming hand one inch one way or the other, or using my “mojo” picks, I can make a pretty big change in tone. Joe’s at least trying to be semi-scientific.
Wow, that was depressing. Any resemblance between the dynamics and articulation of the successive test chords is purely coincidental.
I think one reason I’m so bitchy about this is because I too have fallen victim to “wishful listening.” There was a time when I though I heard differences between caps. But “tone memory” is very unreliable, at least for me. All the differences I thought I perceived evaporated as soon as I added some quasi-scientific controls and made A/B test recordings.
Also, our hearing is not a constant thing — our perceptions literally change over the course of a listening session due to fatigue and other factors. I’m not sure if this phenomenon is more extreme with middle-aged hearing, or whether I’m just more attuned to these things from so many years of practice. But our ears lie to us — a lot.
Bebah, in this application when all what a cap do is to pass certain frequency to ground and block others, the charging/discharging influences the sound about the same amount as when somebody farted in the room you’re playing in (extra gas in the air for the sound to go through).
OK. Whatever.
#3 Sounded best [I friggin love Orange Drops]. #2 seemed kinda weird, more mid spike than the rest turned down partly but the most dull all the way down. The cheapness really shows. 1 and 4 sounded the same throughout with 4 sounding a bit more thuddy all the way down; pretty sad for a cap that costs 50 bucks vs one that costs a quarter.
I firmly believe caps can and do sound different. I worked for a company that designed spkrs, PAs, repairs, and early high end car-fi (1982). They had a building in a little farming community in Illinois south of Champaign. When we were working on some passive x-over designs we would go outside and find people on the street to listen test designs. There were a lot of old farmers and their wives, farm workers, bedroom community members etc. when we were testing the caps used in the x-over we clearly had a preference for a french made electrolytic cap made by Aero corp. These caps were a polar non-etched foil electrolytic they were larger than the Japanese caps that were common probably due to the non-etched foil which has less surface area so it needs more foil for the same capacitance. We used these caps in x-overs, power and pre amps (outside the feedback loop), electronic x-overs etc. we found they sounded even better in a non-polar series coupling rather than single ended. I have also seen problems were high sound levels seem to effect some components causing noise and distortion. IMHO there are many of the old revered caps are loved for their short comings. There were companies just starting to produce high-end caps back then with wildly vaying levels of sound quality, and they failed regularly.
Some Orange drops are indeed fine caps but there are many variations that are Orange drop looking (made by Sprague) that are different some sound great in audio circuits some are kinda ho-hum. Orange drips also have always had a very low failure rate. I knew a guy that had a vast collection of military surplus capacitors there werw some that really sounded sweet. There were a bunch of silver-mica and some others that were really sweet in tone circuits.
What I'd really like to hear is a comparison of say, 3 different Mallorys from different batches– one -10%, one at tolerance and one +10%. I'm willing to bet a week of beer that there would be a more audible difference than what we just heard. (and yeah, I could hear a difference, and I liked 3 the best, but if you switched 'em on me I would never ever notice.)
I remember seeing caps with -50% | +100% mainly old stuff like pre-1960. They were used in circuits that didn’t need any precision. As we used to say in electronics class “close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and capacitors”.
Yeah, BUT … anyone with a decent ear can perceive the difference between, say, a .022µF and a .033µF cap in a standard RC tone circuit. So it seems to me that most players would very much detect differences between units with ±50% tolerances.
I agree. A ±10% value change would probably be way more perceptible than any of this crap. 😉
It is fare to say this has been the best blind demonstration for us. Even though there is encoding losses in the audio but these are real world losses one would expect to see. (mp3 Music sales and or encoding of CDs to mp3) Can I hear the difference I don't know I used two different computers for playback one was the one I record and mix with, what differences I think I hear are the subtle differences in Joe's playing. These Capacitor arguments always make me laugh, way back in my youth I was being instructed in the ways of a communications electronics when dealing with radio frequencies a simple capacitor makes a huge difference as the ones Us so called guitar heads the ones we lust after just don't work as well in higher radio frequencies. So I was taught there are Capacitors for Power filtering, Audio and radio I think what we are calling the better sounds are less than perfectness of the construction of the so called Capacitors. A perfect only has Capacitance where real world Capacitors have small amounts of stray resistance and inductance and thus are a resonant circuit all of its own now not a very good one and I have not measured this effect if not resonant has a Capacitance that is uneven over a frequency range that we are interested in this is only a theory and has not been proven or even tested as far as I'm concerned.
Another one that just blows my mind is “tonewoods” ,something invented to sell guitars. Intelligent people swear that wood changes the sound of an electric guitar enough to be heard by the human ear. No matter what anyone says it is a bunch of BS. Go check the thread at Seymour Duncan Forums on it , crazy stuff.
You know, I haven’t really been following that debate, though when it came up in some thread somewhere recently, I said that of course the wood matters. Perhaps I shouldn’t have spoken so quickly. For obvious reasons, it’s been difficult to make objective A/B comparisons of the sort I like to try.
I’m not being disingenuous when I ask, “So the thinking is that the type of wood makes no difference? That two electric guitars that are identical in all regards except body material (maple vs. mahogany, say) are likely to sound identical? What about wood vs. composites and other materials?” Your thoughts?
Of course it will. Suppose you had something like balsa, almost “not there” vs. a slab of steel. Consider Les Paul’s railroad track experiment, add a touch of Nigel Tufnel, go out for a bite, and it’s still “aaaaaaaahhh”.
How different they have to be before you notice, and what the actual attributes are that control it, I’m not entirely sure but at least the material’s density is probably important.
Let’s not forget to say whether or not the body is getting vibrational input from the amplifier.
That said, I’m probably wrong. I’m used to it.
First off the entire “tonewood” was now a VERY successful marketing strategy period endofstory. Of course there is a difference in different woods and/or materials. What I believe is it cannot be determined by the human ear.I have altered guitars by removing large chunks of wood , I helped build a guitar out of clear plastic that sounded better then my Les Paul. I had a Steinberger with a graphite neck that was very nice to play but I never got to try out some passive pups in it to see. I always say the “electric” part is the most important variable in the sound . In doing a test it would require that the only thing you change on the guitar is the actual body wood and everything else remains exactly the same.Go back to the first advertisements for guitars they specify hardware choices and building/craftmanship there is no talk about wood until not long ago.Anyway it just rubs me wrong that I am the “idiot ” because I don’t go along with the popular views.Science is not friends with the musical equipment elite.
So are you guys saying that it DOES matter — but just not as dramatically as some people would like us to believe? And that it’s so subtle that few, if any, listeners and players can detect it?
After watching something like this, it’s hard to tell what I believe any more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFyQXy74xz4
That is what I am saying Joe. Look at all the pieces in the sound of an electric guitar.(I hate that tone word and all the other words used to describe guitar sounds too.) The strings are the start of it , they are attached to the guitar at the tuning machines and the bridge with the saddles holding them up. You have the guitar parts neck,frets, fretboard and body. Then there is the jack , switches,wire pots ,caps and pickups.Hardware includes the bridge,nut and tuning machines.Pick a spot and tell me what it REALLY means to the sound? When you talk about how guitars don’t sound the same ,aren’t they almost always a different scale length ? Where you put the frets has a pretty large impact on the sounds that are made by the strings.I always go back to my fav quote, “People can convince themselves of anything!”
https://lespaulfoundation.org/sevenpages/page1.htm
“people listen with their eyes”
I think the tonewood debate usually gets muddled when people use the multidimensional and imprecise ‘tone’ to mean a fairly uni-dimensional ‘sound’ – as in the terminally projected sound. Pickups, and the EQ bending hardware have a huge influence on sound. But the woods used contribute to many other factors – resonance, sustain, mass, etc. It changes the way you attack the strings and the way the instrument responds to your attack. Try playing a mahogany tele or a pine LP and you’ll quickly notice how different the entire playing experience is, and consequently, how dramatically different the resulting sound is – beyond just frequency projection, though that is noticeably different too in my experience.
The argument that any body material can sound good is irrelevant to the fact that each sounds and plays differently. I personally don’t find it useful to try to ascribe a precise relative influence on the sound, but it’s definitely significant in my book. For those that conclude otherwise, that’s fine. Help yourself to the Lowes ‘white wood’ and leave the mahogany for me…. 🙂
I've been repairing and designing electronic circuits for over 30 years… I also happen to work for a company that does sound, had a recording studio and is still around after 40 years. I've repaired harrison, peavey, fender, tac, otari shure, jbl, etc. etc. etc.. and I can tell you from electronics classes and from personal experience that capacitors (unless they are "precision" have huge tolerances in manufacturing and often times can be pulled completely out of circuits without effecting the output of the electronic device at all… So… the only true way to discern any real difference is with a scope or by blind testing, and blind testing leaves a whole lot to be desired… Use a dual channel oscilloscope and compare the two circuits with the same input to determine the differences. There is no other way… -gs
Hey Joe, I read your Amps vs. Models test & results (https://www.seymourduncan.com/tonefiend/diy/amp-vs-models-contest-the-winners/) but you still haven't said what plugins you exactly used for the models. I just read you saying it was in Logic, but nothing else…
Then go ahead and put some Gold Caps in your old tube amp and see what happens… Nipponchimmechong…..
[…] Re: Shame on you Gibson. Shame. Capacitor Smackdown! Does Cap Type Matter? – tonefiend.com […]
Maybe it’s imagination. Maybe it’s marketing. Maybe it’s wishful thinking. But one thing it’s not is … true. 😉