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Difference in Capacitors

#21
Hopkins said:
$60.28, $49.99 and even $13.80 is absolutely insane for a tone cap in a guitar. I guarantee that nobody could tell which was which between one of those rip offs and a $0.50 cap from radio shack of the same value.

A sucker is born every day.
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This.
Exactly.
I saw a video of a guy testing caps in his guitar (I believe it was posted in TB a while ago. I might still have been a lurker.). He measured to make sure they were close in value. They all sounded the same to me, honestly. There was an orange drop, paper-oil, tropical fish (as he called it) etc.

TBH, a tone cap that magically alters your sound is not worth chasing amongst all the other perfectly functioning caps.
 
#22
GlennW said:
That's one of the advantages of actually testing them.

You don't have to "imagine" anything, you can hear for yourself.

I've also noticed that most people who claim there's no difference haven't bothered to do any testing.
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Got data? Plots? If you know anything about audio /hearing and the psychology that goes with it, you'll know that 'hearing a difference' means exactly nothing. Advantage - measurements.
Have I measured? I don't have to, because I know how it works.
 
#23
dmusic148 said:
C'mon folks. If you know how the circuit works you also know that what you hear is what DIDN'T go through the cap. Pretty hard to imagine how it could affect the sound. It drains treble from the signal, nothing more.
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While I agree that cap differences are very unlikely to be audible, this reasoning isn't correct. The cap affects the output of the bass, otherwise it wouldn't be there, right? Yes, it does that subtractively, but so what? If you change what's subtracted, you change the result. Obviously, if you change the value of the cap you change the sound; if (big if) other paramaters of the cap varied enough, they could change the sound as well. I don't believe that happens, but the design of the circuit does not preclude the possibility.

And if you know how the circuit works, you know that an LCR circuit has a resonant peak, so a typical passive tone control doesn't just drain treble, there's a bump in the frequency response that gets bigger and/or lower as you turn down the tone pot and increase the capacitor's effect on the circuit. Higher pickup inductance (which typically means a higher output pickup) increases the effect. This isn't voodoo, it's easily calculated, measured, and often audible.

Reid
 
#24
dmusic148 said:
Got data? Plots? If you know anything about audio /hearing and the psychology that goes with it, you'll know that 'hearing a difference' means exactly nothing. Advantage - measurements. Have I measured? I don't have to, because I know how it works.
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There clearly are measurable differences between capacitors, just read the data sheets. No one disputes that. That's why they make different types. The issue is whether those differences are audible in a typical circuit. Therefore, if you want to be rigorous (you seem to, since you asked about data and plots), the most appropriate approach would be double-blind listening tests. Remove all the biases and see if anyone can reliably tell which cap is which. I'd be very surprised if anyone can, but if they do then you go back and reevaluate the theory. You don't dismiss the need for experiments just because you know your theory; that's not the scientific method.

Reid
 
#25
MAMMOTHvolume said:
paper in oil, is technically the best but at those currents etc it doesn't really make a difference
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I agree with this. My choice for all time "best" capacitor would be military grade vitamin Q. They are paper in oil. They will last centuries. They are stable. They are low loss. they are "best". Russian makes a paper in oil copy that is close but not quite the same. Cheap paper in oil are OK, but again lower quality than military Vitamin Q.

On the other end of the pole are wax and paper! Hint: just because something is historic doesn't mean it's good! These were cheap crap when they were common and new and nothing has changed. Heat will melt wax and are prone to failure even without heat or stress.

What do I use? I use polystyrene caps. They are very accurate, very stable, very good sounding and best of all I acquired a drawer full of them a long time ago so for me they are basically free for now.

Also someone mentioned ceramic disks. These do come in good and bad kinds. Best not to try to sort them and just avoid the type all together. Best feature is they can be had for pennies (which is why they are common in lots of entry level basses) and they also might be some of the worst caps you can use if you get the wrong type.

If I were paying money for caps, I'd get vitamin Q and mount them properly. They are sort of heavy so it's best to hold them down somehow rather than just support them with the leads. That keeps leads from breaking due to shock and vibrations. Just a gob of bathtub silicone is enough to hold them in place.

You don't need to do that with polystyrene or other poly caps because they are much lighter and don't put as much force on the leads.

In any event differences in tone due to cap type is a VERY minor effect.
 
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#26
I don't know why people get so wound up about this. I guess musos are passionate types. And that's actually a good thing in the long run. I can taste the difference in milk from plastic bottles and cardboard cartons. Where I live, milk is cheaper in plastic so I've probably wasted, I dunno, 10-20 bucks a year for the last decade?... So spending a few extra dollars on a tone cap that lasts for your entire lifetime and makes you adore your axe even more is just fine with me.
 
#28
Assuming you are right, and different capacitors do sound different, what is the measurable quality of the capacitor that is causing it to sound different? It must not be capacitance. So, what is it?

I do agree that if it makes you "adore" your instrument a little more, then it is worth it. If there is a real, audible difference, though, then it has to be somewhere in the specs.
 
#31
wvbass said:
Unless your alligator clips can measure capacitance, I gotta go with line6man on this.

Q: don't orange drops come in different tolerances? Haven't I seen 5, 10 and 20% versions? Also, I'm not sure the tighter tolerance is the one that you want. What if the capacitor the helps a vintage P bass have that magic tone is a capacitor that is way at the far end or the tolerace range?
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FWIW, my rotary switch (I posted pictures of my test harness before) has a couple of capacitors still on.

Since there is tolerance and the different kinds of capacitors had different actual values I went through the trouble of selecting an additional ceramic disk from my 100-pack or whatever it is that measured the same actual value as the orange drop in there.

The two different actual value ceramics still sounded more similar than the same-value ceramic and orange drop. Which makes sense if you want to explain any difference at all in capacitors. There are other electrical properties to at least some of these capacitor styles than just a pure capacitance. But you won't be able to hear the difference between 43 and 47 nF if that is really the only change.
 
#32
wvbass said:
Assuming you are right, and different capacitors do sound different, what is the measurable quality of the capacitor that is causing it to sound different? It must not be capacitance. So, what is it?

I do agree that if it makes you "adore" your instrument a little more, then it is worth it. If there is a real, audible difference, though, then it has to be somewhere in the specs.
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The problem is that if you have an electric unit that has more than one of capacitance, inductance and resistance it is very hard to measure the individual properties. That is for example why it is so hard to measure the capacitance of a passive pickup. Capacitance can be measure a number of different ways and all the easy ones are thrown off if there is inductance.

Would be interesting to throw Lemme's circuit for measuring pickup capacitance and use it on different style capacitors as discussed here.
 
#33
I have a handful of NOS vitamin q that I got from my brother in law who's family has long been in the electronics repair business so that is what I use. We sat and tested a crapload one day with the multimeter and almost every one read within tolerance. Tested some old Erie and Cornell Dubilier (Fender spec) and almost all had drifted upward of stated tolerance, with many .05's reading at .069 and even .15. Compared to Sprague's orange drops, the 30-40 year old vitamin q were right there with them in reading stated spec. Pretty impressive for something so old and "prone to failure". If one decides to use the glass encapsulated paper in oil, be careful with the soldering iron and use a heat sink, because excessive heat sent a few .047's up to .069 and .073, which is definitely an audible difference with the tone rolled off.

They were free, they work as stated and that's what's in my basses. I'll also use orange drops for the same reasons. I will not be using the crumbly little radio shack ceramics or the little green chicklets. Why? Because I don't have to and if I want something as egregious as a 600v paper in oil cap in my bass, that's my choice and I don't have to justify it to anyone:)
 
#34
dmusic148 said:
Got data? Plots? If you know anything about audio /hearing and the psychology that goes with it, you'll know that 'hearing a difference' means exactly nothing. Advantage - measurements.
Have I measured? I don't have to, because I know how it works.
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Gotta love it...

You might think you know how it works, but you don't know what it sounds like until you hear it.

You can look at your plots and data all day long while feeling real smart, and it won't amount to a row of beans.
 
#35
GlennW said:
Gotta love it...

You might think you know how it works, but you don't know what it sounds like until you hear it.

You can look at your plots and data all day long while feeling real smart, and it won't amount to a row of beans.
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However, having charts and real data is a heckuva lot better than just popping in some high-dollar cap and then imagining we hear a difference!

Caps have very real properties. Dissipation factor, leakage, etc. in addition to their capacitance. We can do a pretty good job of predicting how caps can perform in a circuit by looking at those properties. Are you saying knowing those properties is useless?

On the other hand,what dmusic is referring to is basically an extension of the placebo effect: if somebody has just spent $50 for what's supposedly a super-duper audio-grade capacitor, they WILL tend to hear a difference in the "sound" of that capacitor. They have just spent lots of money so they expect to hear a difference! This effect is very well documented with real scientific testing. That's real testing done by double-blind studies, not just by soldering in a new cap and swearing "OMG it sounds so much better".

Of course, the true audiophiles don't believe in double-blind testing.
 
#36
Just curious, but when doing cap tests, how do you maintain consistency for plucking the string? Just thinking that a small difference in where the string is struck, the amount of finger contact or even the angle of your finger (or pick) can change the whole way a string vibrates, and your perceived sound (bouncy, punchy, growl etc.)
Maybe I watch too much Mythbusters, But it seems the only way to do a true sound comparison would be to have some sort of mechanical plucking device that hits the string exactly the same on each test.
 
#37
Just jump over to any audiophile forum - they've been arguing over the unmeasurable characteristics of everything for years (some think that their power cord affects the sound of their amps - etc.). This is not a winnable argument, and will go on forever. Some claim they can hear it, others say it is not real. To each his own.
I do a lot of amp repair, especially vintage work on Fender, Marshall, Ampeg, Sunn. I like to stick with either Orange Drop or Mallory caps for signal caps, and Sprague Atoms for electrolytics. They are all good caps, and sound quite good. I have replaced some of the cheap Asian made caps that are common in amps manufactured today with these caps and they "seem" to be a little less brittle in sound. One obvious difference that I see often is that the good caps have a lot less issue with microphonics. I was inside a recently made Ampeg amp (J-20?) that was full of asian Mallory imitations. Several of these caps were microphonic and replacing them with Mallory's improved the amp performance.
YRMV.
 
#39
uOpt said:
The problem is that if you have an electric unit that has more than one of capacitance, inductance and resistance it is very hard to measure the individual properties.
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If different types of capacitors do in fact sound different, then it would be due to properties other than capacitance. The problem with the quote above is that all these are not hard to measure. It is hard to buy resistance, or equivalent series resistance as the magic tone factor, because of other sources of resistance in the circuit. I would think it more likely that any measurable resistance of a capacitor would equate to needing to turn the tone knob to a slightly different position to get the same, measurable values (same tone) form the tone circuit.

If it sounds different, I am still trying to understand why. What is being described is a change in the frequency response of the circuit, but nobody is offering more than "golden ears" as proof. Granted, you may in fact have golden ears (I sure don't), but any tone difference still has to be the result of measurable values of the capacitor.
 
#40
ReidK said:
Therefore, if you want to be rigorous (you seem to, since you asked about data and plots), the most appropriate approach would be double-blind listening tests. Remove all the biases and see if anyone can reliably tell which cap is which.
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Not 100% perfect, but I believe better controlled than other comparisons many use to judge. Here's the survey -

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And here's the review -

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A bit long to watch, but for those interested in such things I tried my best to do an honest evaluation.
 

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