Capacitor question?

[gmann]

Anybody using a . 022 cap along with a .015 cap? What would be the advantage of this? It seemed to be a popular mod here on the LPF a few yrs back.

 

[bluesky636]

I do. 0.022 mfd cap for bridge tone, 0.015 mfd cap for neck tone. Keeps the neck from getting too dark and muddy as can happen with a 0.022 mfd cap on the neck tone control.

 

[metropolis]

I did this recently as an experiment and found the difference was barely noticeable. I was hoping to brighten up the neck pickup but with a fairly solid A/B test (recording the same tone back to back then listening back with studio monitors) it didn't seem to do much at all. Certainly not as much as the pot value or the pickups themselves.

 

[charliechitlins]

You'll get much greater results by dropping the pickup way down.

 

[giogolf]

Anybody using a . 022 cap along with a .015 cap? What would be the advantage of this? It seemed to be a popular mod here on the LPF a few yrs back.

I personally use .015 in both the neck and bridge on all my Gibsons that require a replacement or if its non-vintage. My rational is, I can always turn the tone knob down, but I can never turn it up past 10 . I rather have more high frequencies at my disposal to manipulate.

Assuming you understand how capacitors work; they bleed les highs and some high mids to ground as you lower the value. I like the idea of allowing as much to pass as possible and then adjust with volume and Tone knobs, which I am constantly using to adjust my tone.

 

[dwagar]

I was using .015/.022s for a long time. Like Giogolf, I eventually started just using .015s for both.

 

[bluesky636]

I did this recently as an experiment and found the difference was barely noticeable. I was hoping to brighten up the neck pickup but with a fairly solid A/B test (recording the same tone back to back then listening back with studio monitors) it didn't seem to do much at all. Certainly not as much as the pot value or the pickups themselves.

It's not going to brighten up the neck pickup when turned all the way up but it will help that pickup from getting too muddy when turned all the way down.

 

[Wilko]

I did this recently as an experiment and found the difference was barely noticeable. I was hoping to brighten up the neck pickup but with a fairly solid A/B test (recording the same tone back to back then listening back with studio monitors) it didn't seem to do much at all. Certainly not as much as the pot value or the pickups themselves.

You didn't notice a difference when using the tone control? it won't make difference wide open. Only the volume pot difference will change that.

 

[metropolis]

I've seen a lot of people claiming and/or showing comparisons of tone controls set to 10 with different caps so I wanted to validate it myself. I figure it's in the circuit, and it's dumping something to ground even when on 10 (that's why removing the tone control entirely changes the tone) but from what I could tell you guys are right, no impact.