pot and capacitor advice needed

[tony moore]

hi all,

i've been having fun assembling basses from parts bought here on talkbass. below is my current 'build' in progress:



the body is an allparts body that was stained and stripped and splotchy, so i refinished it with reranch rattle can nitro vintage tint (tho it came out amber because of the previous stripped stain).

i've shielded the cavities and am preparing to dip my toes in the wiring water. the pickups are dimarzio pj's and i have 2 humbuckers to choose for the neck position; a dimarzio model one or the bill lawrence in the pic.

from reading a bunch of posts here and on the dimarzio site, i've decided to wire the pickups to a 5-way rotary switch from guitarelectronics.com:



then to a master concentric 500k volume/tone control also from guitarelectronics.com:



i'm stuck on the capacitor to use and could use some advice. i chose 500k pots mainly from the direction of dimarzio who claim it will allow a more full tonal range from their pickups. is their a capacitor value that would allow me to get the full tonal range when the tone control is wide open, but allow me to dial back to more 'traditional' tones?

note that despite this bass having 3 pickups, i'm simple minded and am not interested in switches for series and parallel and such. i've had basses with these features, and they just confuse my simple mind. i'm ok living within the limits of simple pickup switches and a master volume and tone knob.

thanks for the help and thanks for all the great info here!

tony

[Andyman001]

.022uf or .047uf are the most common, although I've heard people go higher or lower.

How are you going to configure that switch?

[tony moore]

thanks! do you have an opinion on what tone the different values will yield?

the pickup switch will be configured:

position 1: neck pickup soloed
position 2: middle pickup soloed
position 3: bridge pickup soloed
position 4: middle and bridge pickup selected
position 5 neck and bridge pickup selected

that's more than enough tonal options for me and are based on pickup selections i've liked from various basses owned.

thanks,

tony

[abemo]

Basically, the cap bleeds off frequencies above a certain cutoff point, and the cutoff point changes according to the cap value. A smaller value cap will bleed off fewer frequencies, therefore resulting in a "brighter" tone. A .022 cap will only bleed off the very top end, leaving more of your high mids intact, whereas a .047 cap will bleed off the highs and some of the high mids, resulting in a darker tone. The bigger the cap value, the more frequencies are bled off (for instance, a .1 cap would bleed off too much for most, leaving a pile of mush with only low freqs getting through, anything much smaller than .015 or so will have very little effect on tone)

[tony moore]

thank you abemo! your explanation is perfect for me!

do you have any opinion on cap brands?

[Andyman001]

For this application, IMO, it doesn't matter much.

[tony moore]

can you elaborate andyman? are you refering to the cap brand? thanks, tony

[Silver Blues]

Actually I find sometimes caps in the high pF values (4700 and up, esp. 6800-ish) sound really nice. My two basses have a 0.047 and a 0.033 in them, the 47 is pretty dark turned down and brightens up nicely up while the 33 is growly down and snappy up.

+1 to Andy, brand doesn't really matter. Type of material doesn't really matter either, though some people/certain cases swear there's a difference. Me, I like to try as much as I can. Tip: DON'T use polarized capacitors of any kind.

--Silvie

[WillEVee]

I'm working on nearly the same setup & I had the same questions about caps.
This is the reply I got from DiMarzio tech support:
"I prefer .022mFd. The largest value I suggest is .033. I don't feel
there's a lot of difference in performance between different brands, and
voltage is unimportant because there's next to none in a passive
circuit."

[WillEVee]

Note: My question was specific to those exact DiMarzio pups (with the exception of the neck pup being a Will Power/DP145).

[Lo-E]

Originally Posted by WillEVee

"I prefer .022mFd. The largest value I suggest is .033. I don't feel
there's a lot of difference in performance between different brands, and
voltage is unimportant because there's next to none in a passive
circuit."

This. Brand and type mean very little here. I've had good luck with .033 and .02. Get a couple of each value of generic film caps from Radio Shack and see which sounds better to your ear. It's only a few minutes to change them out.

[tony moore]

thanks all! i'll take the advice and buy a variety to experiment and will start with the 0.02.

willevee - awesome! curious, what led you to the will power? i came to the model one only as it showed up cheap for sale here in tb :-)

[WillEVee]

I went with the Will Power basically based from the information on DiMarzio's site. The Model One was designed as a replacement for the short scale Gibson bass. The Will Power accommodates wider string spacing for longer scale basses, plus according to them gets a fatter sound.
Let me know how that works out for you. It looks like you're farther along than I am!
Good luck

[tony moore]

good point on the string spacing, i just read that based on your comment. i'm planning on tackling this next week and will let you know how it goes. the routes are likely the same (or close enough for me :-) to switch if it doesn't work out.

i'm just waiting for the switch and pots to show up now...

[P Town]

Get a few different values and listen to the difference, and select the one you think sounds best to your ears.

[mjac28]

that neck pickup looks funky keep us updated on the progress.

[tony moore]

will do ptown :-)

mjac, it's a brian lawrence that i've never seen before. bought it here on tb...