More than caps material, values are the most tone changing. I just had an amazing experience with tone capacitors values. The usual values, we know the differences in sound. Most of the time as soon as you set the potentiometer to zero the sound is muffled, unusable. With 0.015uf it is the least worst. I experimented with much lower values, between 0.0047uf and 0.0082uf. It sounds like a wahwah pedal stuck in the middle position, when the tone pot is at zero. With some mid/treble frequencies which are preserved. By choosing the right value I reached an extremely interesting and unique sound, and above all very usable. Not a dull, uninteresting sound. I tested these values with a single p90 junior LP (50's wiring). The sound is amazing. I think that for stratocaster style pickups or humbuckers, other values could be better, but not certain.
Hey now, cork sniffers are free to sniff all the cork that want. But sometimes truth bombs and information in videos like this can give the rest of us the assurance of knowing that we're running good stuff too. I honestly have no problem with people playing what they like, whether it's the cheapest or most expensive thing. But it's, like you say, when they act like hall monitors and try to be "gatekeepers of good" about it all -- as if spending more money on something that does the exact same thing somehow automatically makes them better -- that's what crosses the line for me. Lie and let live...
I’m one of those cork sniffers and snobs. I realize that a lot of stuff can be negligible or even BS but nerding out on capacitors is fun. Capacitors are like audio jewelry. They look cool
Yep! I'm all for folks chasing their own happiness. It's when they start acting like they're better or everyone else is wrong that it bugs me. It's not that important from an objective standpoint. So, as important as it may be for them personally, it's completely subjective and there are no absolute "right" or "wrong" values or materials, only individual preference. Live and let live.
Thank you. This was great- and underscores for me the integrity Lollar brings to everything they do. Having myself been obsessed with designing my own tone for 40 years, I was for most that a "cap is a cap, a resistor a resistor" guy. I was sure that even the real signal-handling differences engineers know exist between the materials were, for practical purposes, drowned-out in the mud of non-linearities and noise inherent in this kind of messy system. And indeed, some of my very best designs used only ceramics and carbon resistors for tone. But I learned over time they weren't really replicable- even if I hand-matched every cap and resistor. Why? Well, with the caps it's two reasons: Heat and Acoustics. If you want some fun, hook a ceramic cap up to your capacitance meter then just squeeze it hard. Its capacitance changes considerably even w/the temp of your fingers! Then for a real shock, shock it with your heat gun or soldering iron. Bottom line: Ceramic caps wander wildly with temperature. And in terms of acoustics, it's well knowns: ceramic caps, being piezoelectric, literally are [terrible] little microphones & speakers. Now, here's the hard part: I actually think in my very favorite rig designs, both of those factors inadvertently were adding to the quality rather than subtracting. IOW, when I was A/B'ing caps in sensitive (high-gain/high-impedance) parts of my circuits at full volume, unwittingly I choose values sometimes because they just sounded "more interesting." And while I attributed that strictly to value then, I now realize that cap voltage-rating (as being proportional to dielectric width, thus affecting microphonics) sometimes mattered more than value in such high-vibration settings. Oh, and about resistors, that's easy: Once OpAmps were good enough that one's entire generated noise was less than a single carbon resistor's, it was time to go all metal. Maybe it's time for us all to have wirewound or plastic film pots on our guitars/amps- but no, not worth it to me, my rig's faint hiss is nice 🙂 But about Caps: I'm torn, there really are old designs I've never been able to replicate the magic because (turns out) the schematic wasn't the whole story. But for practical reasons, I also now only use film caps in sensitive circuits- because I do need to replicate circuits, and they're quite temp & age & acoustically stable. That said I adore MLCC anywhere I used to need an electrolytic 😂
u know what matters more for great tone? Having a killer set of pups and that's what Jason provides. Love em all , thanks Jason for producing some of the best sounding pups in the industry!
I was drawn to 3 for some reason. I felt like it sounded better when strummed compared to the other two. Never even thought about capacitors until now, because I'm in the middle of building my first tele.
Yeah I haven’t ever cared at all about such things but I thought the same. Although oddly enough and I feel ridiculous using this language the 2nd one sorta had this weird filtery thing going on with the clean that was almost like a… :( quack? I have no idea how to describe this BUT there was something there that was different. The last one seemed the most… harmonic? I hate trying to describe this stuff it feels so ridiculous but it was almost like something with the overtones.
Paper in oil baby... I could heard it when it was first played... But since I've listened to that cap in my 1968 Les Paul for over 50 years, I shouldn't be surprised. Great video. Thank you!
Thanks for taking the time to analyse the # caps. Although the difference is very subtle, I tend to prefer the #3 and discovered it was the bumble bees. I have them in my LP and they sound sweet and mellow. I have an I-35 LC fitted with your low wind Imperials: awesome pickups. The caps are polyester film and foil (Jupiter I think). They allow for a wide tonal range and I tend to roll back the tone quite a bit to cut off high frequancies. Being a '50s wiring, the tone pot influences the volume so I have to find a sweet spot. Thanks for uploading guys: Jason is a tone wizard !! 🎸🎵👍🏻
Exactly! There definitely IS a difference, and you're right -- it is a very subtle difference. And that difference may, in fact, just be due to the small variation in cap value as much as anything else. But that's what makes doing stuff like this fun. We weren't 100% sure what the results would be before (or even during) the making of this video. In the end, it really is up to the individual player's preference. If someone can hear a difference and they choose to go with the one that they like better; great! And if someone can't hear a difference and they choose to go with the one that suits their wallet best, or if they just want to buy the most expensive one just to be able to say it has the "fanciest" components; so be it. As long as they are happy with the results, then everybody wins. Knowing that it doesn't make as big of a difference, as often claimed on gear forums and advertisement copy is a good, level playing field from which to start. And that was the main takeaway of this video for me.
I appreciate you for doing this, ld like to think I can hear minute subtlety variances in audio and tone, which maybe other's can't or even care to pay attention to. But l could not here a huge difference in the caps other than the perceived volumes when the tone was rolled down. Seems like any difference in the cap types is minimal and so subtle that most will not be able to discern any difference.
What actually is more important to me than tone is the feel! I've played instruments and amps that are my style, they had the tone, but somehow not the feel, and hence I didn't really like them. On the other hand I have played instruments and amps that were not really my style, but had all the right feel, and I was loving them! Point being, you have to play them to know if you like them, because it is (almost) impossible to get the feel from a video!!
Well that was a fun little experiment with helpful info! Thanks! If I had to narrow my choice of pickups it would be Lollar P-90's and 70's Gibson tarbacks. The Lollars are my faves tho.
Awesome, thank you! We just wanted to be sure that we made it as clear and understandable as possible. I'm glad to hear it seems to be resonating with folks.
Thanks for making this video. It's a year old, but maybe you'll see my comments in awhile. Jason Lollar did a demo for Audio Engineering Society, I think is was, around 2002. He used a converted sewing machine to wind a pickup. We loved it! Re: caps, I could hear small differences. I correctly guessed that #2 is the orange drop. They sound a bit harsher and more trebly to me. But sometimes I want that. Other times I prefer Russian paper in oils, which sound darker and smoother. I made a cap switcher/tester so I could just alligate into the guitar and pick the cap I like best. I'll share a private, crazy theory I have about why caps of the same value sound different: Recall that a capacitor has a "capacity" of some amount of current (electrons actually, I think it is, before it fills up.) For higher AC frequencies that don't fill it up, they are passed through the cap. But lower freqs, that keep going in one polarity before turning around, they are blocked. Hence the cap is a high pass filter. The lower the pot's resistance setting, the more of the signal can hit the cap and the highs passed. Here's the interesting part. The material the cap is made of may effect how smoothly or roughly the signal is affected around the cutoff freq of the cap. And especially if the cap is before the tone pot in the circuit (my own voodoo belief - I know), the tone is affected by that process. That's before considering any reflections or eddies, if you will, that get reflected back into the circuit and the output. I don't have a oscilloscope good enough take a look and test the theory. But if you want to check it out that would be great.
You are aligned with my experiences as well. I ended up preferring pio caps in mahogany guitars. Vitamin Ts oil caps in strats, bumblebees in thin sounding guitars like Ibanezes as it slightly fattens them up.
Having a frequency analyzer on the output signal would have been great. Compare all 3 final signals... Bumble bees are pure marketing. Mostly plastic with a small cap inserted. Including the typical green Fender chicklets and the ceramic disks seen on imports would have been great too. The 3 tested are relatively high price.
As for the frequency analyzer, I agree. I actually thought of that after I was done editing the video and, by then it was too late and would've taken too much additional resources to go back and add it. As for the other cap types, the main point is the same: if the values are closely matched, then there will be very little discernable difference in sound. We originally wanted to include a ceramic and do film-and-foil, paper-in-oil, and ceramic, but the ceramic caps that we had were all WAAAAAAY off spec, so it wasn't a good apples-to-apples comparison. So, instead we just used a couple different types of film caps.
Great comparison, I prefered #3 and it's what I just ordered in the Telecaster wiring harness I just ordered along with the 52 pickups so I'm glad I ordered the paper and oil.
I can hear it! Number 3, it’s got an airy quality to, almost 3D. Ballsy while retaining all its clarity and articulation. I’ve got a Kot, Rat, Timmy, Klon on my board running into a Fuchs…. 😂😂 sorry, couldn’t help but try out my best GearPage impersonation😂😂. I could hear interesting differences in the cap value but will never expensive on caps again. Thanks for this!
3 sounds different, a bit more aggressive with like more "tremble chorus" on the dirty sounds. I liked it best. Went into this test expecting zero difference tbh, but to my ears they did sound a bit different. Interesting stuff. Thank you for this!
Yeah, every cap may have a slightly different fingerprint on the sound. It's funny how we all go into things like this with different expectations and sometimes we're completely surprised with the results. But, at the end of the day, it's often the cap's value that determines what the resulting tone sounds like. So even two of the same material and marked as the same value could have enough variance in the value to make it sound different than the next. All that matters is whether or not the player likes what they hear. Thanks for taking the time to watch and comment regarding what you heard. Cheers!
That was really interesting! The difference is honestly so small it's basically negligible, but the caps i ended up kinda leaning on are the same ones I have been used to using. I wonder if that's me hearing a profile I'm used to and nothing else. Honestly i now believe that I'm completely indifferent to cap material moving forward🙃
I can definitely discern differences between the three caps. It's important to use one's own ears, and there is no substitute for trying this experiment in-person. Preferences are personal choices. Thanks for making this video!!
That is a interesting test. I played it 3 or 4 times (clean section) and there is a distinct difference between cap1 vs 2 and 3, and less so between 2 and 3, 3 being a little warmer. Also a notable difference in sound at 100% which surprised me. Thank you!
Glad you found it interesting. And, hopefully, it was also entertaining, if not informative. We appreciate you watching it and providing feedback. Cheers!
@@LollarPickups On one of your blog articles, it is mentioned that the difference in tone is due to variables in playing/picking. In this test, those variables were eliminated but I hear a difference. Am I imagining things ? :)
The number one thing contributing to any tonal difference that you may be hearing is the actual VALUE of the capacitors. We tried to get them as closely matched as possible, but they are not exact. And, while you may hear some degree of difference between them, others may hear no difference at all. Some of that may be due to different types of damage done to different peoples' hearing over the years, resulting in differences in perceivable frequency response "holes", where one person can hear some frequencies more of less than others. And some of the difference may also just be chocked up to a placebo effect. If you weren't anticipating differences and listening so intently, perhaps you might not have noticed any differences at all. Much like how many people never notice when a recording drummer uses different snare drums from one song to the next on an album; many people simply don't care enough about the sound of the snare to scrutinize it enough to notice any difference.
@@LollarPickups Well I live in a pretty quiet place, don't drive and work at home, but its not a reason ;) your explanation makes sense. I actually ordered a bunch of different capacitors to try for myself as well. thank you for taking the time.
BRAVO...!!! Congratulations on your decision of set-up👍 So much misinformation has been floated down this river it's ridiculous. Some folks say they achieved better tone by switching the direction of caps leads.🙄 Thanks for this helpful video 😎👍 😎👍❤🖖
Thank you for your kind words and input! Hopefully folks will start to get wise to some of the misinformation that is out there. If our videos can contribute to debunking some of those myths, all the better!
Actually there is a difference in what way you put in the caps, because of the way they are wound, but I don´t believe in much difference at all in tone caps. Serial caps means a lot, parallel not so much.
I came to this thinking that there I could hear no difference and I was surprised that I could, I won’t try to qualitatively describe my thoughts on my cork-sniffing experience except that I liked the Orange drops the best. I really did not want to say it, but there you have it.
That's just it; while not everyone can even hear a difference at all, some folks can. You seem to be in the latter camp and, in your case, your preference matters far more than anyone else's opinion. Heck, I'm of the belief that, even is someone can't hear a difference and they just want to say that they do to justify getting the most (or least) expensive option, then that's the right choice *for them*. Perception is reality for most folks and so they should pursue their own enjoyment in their guitar playing. If it makes someone happy and it doesn't hurt anyone else, then it's fair play. Thanks for taking the time to share your input and take care!
That was interesting. Thanks for doing that. I’d find the same type of test with different capacitor ratings (15, 22, 47) instead of different styles of the same rating
You're welcome and thank you for watching! As for the cap value comparison, here's exactly what you're looking for: th-cam.com/video/0Fzsc7uqc3g/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=LollarPickups
I've had a Lollar vintage blonde set in my vintage cbs era strat since 2007. Lollars destroy the factory pickups and give me the most satisfying tone. It's not an early strat, sure, but it sounds like one! Some of my favorite clean tones are Hendrix, Knoffler, The Ventures, Gilmour etc. I wonder is there any difference between the 2007's and today?
Not so much as changes in the functional design of the pickups themselves, but we have made small changes on some occasions to things like the mounting holes (particularly the covers).
You could take this all one step further by using PreSonus to create a second raw signal out of phase with the original raw one - then mixing the two to maximize cancellation. That particular mix then becoming your baseline for capacitor comparisons. Telling you the limits of the system, where whatever remains is simply artifacts from the practical limitations of the entire process. Then you could use those settings to mix signals from the various tone caps. Original raw through one capacitor type, OOP raw through another. Mix them down using your established settings, then anything above and beyond the already known artifacts would represent actual differences between any two capacitor types. Obviously you would want to use caps very closely matched in actual measured capacitance - probably within 1 or 2% of each other. If all you see is indistinguishable from the baseline then you know that - at minimum - any theoretical differences between caps are smaller than the base noise level of an otherwise very simple but precise audio system. BUT before anyone bothers to do this, first ask yourself - If actual differences between cap types were so easily and verifiably identified why haven't any of the sellers of pricey caps already done this sort of demonstration?
I'm laughing at myself. I didn't hear a difference. A student of mine came in with a strat he just build up and I could tell he used an orange drop cap. I didn't like it. But in this video I couldn't tell. I thought I liked ceramic caps the best. They're the cheapest ones so I'll stick with those. Thanks for the trouble. I love your pickups
Have you done a video on 250k vs 500k pots? I recently bought an Eastman T64 with Lollar Dog Ear P90's that were wired with 250k pots. I thought it sounded a bit dark so I swapped the pots to 500k and it made a huge difference! This guitar with the Lollar Dog Ears sounds incredible now!
We haven't, though we may in the future, if enough folks think it would be helpful. To your point, though, our P90 pickups really do sound best with 500k pots. That's what they were intended to be paired with.
@@LollarPickups agreed, they sound much better wired up with 500k. I asked the folks at Eastman why they went the 250k route and they said they wanted to stay in the tradition of that style guitar (kind of an ES-330 hollowbody). Anyways, no disrespect towards Eastman, the guitar is brilliant but I'm glad I decided to take the plunge and see what changing the pots would do. It brought the guitar to life and I can still roll off the tone if I want to go for a jazzier sound.
I didn't like the Mustard as much, but otherwise I honestly couldn't tell a difference between the Orange Drop and paper-in-oil, liked them both. They both have a "classic" sound to me. Honestly, I think if you can nitpick your guitar for something as little as capacitor material, your gear is probably a-okay :)
I'm gonna be 100 percent honest here. I actually guessed the capacitors right!!!! But not because of the sound. I guessed based completely on my luck and how it follows me through life. All three sounded awesome. But, I have the mustards in my Les Paul. I wire my guitars myself. I have the orange drops in my strat. And I have an orange drop for a strat (or at least that's what most use for a strat 47 orange drops) in my SG special. I'm about to change that to 50s wiring. I found the way you wire it actually does change sound also. I like each guitar I have to sound different, if I can. I don't think if my strat or Les Paul as sounding better than one or the other. Just each is better for what ever I'm trying to achieve. But anyway, in your video. The first sounded good, and to me the second sounded better. So i guessed the first was the mustard and the second the orange. Why? Simple because I wished I had more orange drops caps to put in my stuff and I don't. Hahahaha and the third had to be the bumblebee because It sounded best (so to speak, I don't really mean better) simply because, I don't own a single bumblebee cap. Hahahaha I always follow my luck. If my gut says left, I go right brother. If my gut says trust her, run for your life. But back to my Les Paul with the mustards. It sounds better for tool. My strat with the orange drops sound better for skynyrd. At least through my set up. You can all kinds of things to change how things sound these days. I just thought it was hilarious I guessed all three right, based on my luck. I would like to see the same test, but tried between more modern and 50s wiring. Super interested in that. It's alot of work wiring stuff up just to see how it sounds and I'm only basing my opinion off things I have seen in TH-cam. And you can never know who to trust and who not. I watched a video recently of a guy putting a 150 dollar gunstreet wiring kit in a cheap guitar and it made a big difference. You could hear it. He used 50s wiring though. I know the kit he got, you can get everything in it except for the bumblebee, for between 25 and 40 dollars. 30 dollar bumblebee, 70 dollars. I know people gotta make money. But it made me wonder if it was the way it was wired that made such the difference. I know the value of the cap was probably also different than what was in the original guitar also. I'll look to see if you guys have already tried that, but if not, I would like to see it.
I thought I would put 1 on my MM 50s telecaster expecting to be the paper-in-oil one. And 2 is Orange Drop already in my Les Paul. and I was right about Orange Drop but the mustard one sounds awesome and P-I-O sounds really dull
The schematics at 1:40 is clear and correct when the tone knob is at 10. When the pot comes in (i.e. at 5) it starts to cut highs on the frequencies below the cutoff. What would be interesting is to show what happens when tone pot comes in progressively. Thank you. P.S. Excellent video.
I actually wanted to do this exact thing, but I couldn't come up with an easy or affordable way to implement a computer-controlled motor to turn the control at that exact same rate every time. I did actually film a few short shots of me manually rolling each one down. But unfortunately, the results were too inconsistent to be used. It turns out it's quite hard to perfectly recreate that sort of motion three times. Haha!
Right?! And, honestly, any difference there may be is far more likely to be a result of difference in value, not materials. Thanks for watching and for contributing to the conversation!
I like when someone make a blind comparison such as this. Since eye is one of the biggest influence on why we choose certain gear or component. Can you make the same comparison with humbucker ? And maybe with shorter duration because all your methodology has been explained here.
We plan to do a humbucker comparison, actually, but we hadn't thought to do it in a "blind comparison" format. We'll have to take that idea into consideration.
Commented during the blind testing. On clean sound - Cap 2 sounds a tad different and better. Maybe just a bit warmer and more pleasant. Especially as the tone was rolled off. On the distorted sound - Not a very apparent difference. But cap 3 sounded a bit inferior somehow. Very surprised. Didn't match my expectations. Trying again.
I didnt like number 1 until the dirty 0%, but between them all 2 had the best all around sound, IMHO (echoing the closing message, this is my opinion, not a statement of fact. If you liked 1 or 3, and it works for the sound you want to make, go for it! Ill solder it into your guitar myself! No worries). Over the whole test the sound of 2 and 3 really just depended on the style of music and playing Id imagine someone using them with, overall they both sounded good. And honestly, real talk, no joke, put a gun to my head and I still wouldnt be able to tell you which was which hearing it live or on an album. Although I did let out a "HA!" when I saw 2 was the orange drop. So.... yeah, play what you like, the only wrong decision is letting someone elses opinion ruin how you enjoy playing. I play .028uF blue ceramic HV caps (3 10000pF soldered together because its what I had laying around and the .022uF I had in it wasnt tickling my fancy anymore) and it sounds fine for me. At the end of the day were supposed to enjoy music, making or listening. So dont stress about whats right and wrong, just explore and have fun!
Brilliantly stated. I especially liked the part where you said, "play what you like, the only wrong decision is letting someone else's opinion ruin how you enjoy playing." Thanks for watching and for the pleasant contribution to the conversation.
Pretty amazing demo. I'm pretty new at this stuff, but would it be more true to say there's a difference in what we DO NOT hear? One thing I did not hear was addressed, and it may not matter, was to what tolerance each cap was manufactured. But a very cool variable eliminator!! Wow. No matter where I go for a listen , I can hear a difference and enjoy the orange drop. And actually listening to some others, I secondarily enjoy tropical fish. Thanks again for such an awesome demo!!
Great question! I can't recall the exact tolerances that these were sold under, but we went through literal handfuls of caps and they were each measured independently. Then we used the ones that were the closest in value (down to the hundredths or maybe even thousandths) so that they were all, effectively the same value. The value differences between caps in this were all appreciably less than the normal tolerances that are commonly offered under what is considered to be very tight specs. We wanted to ensure that the comparisons were as consistent as we were able to control.
Not at this time. We only offer more "standard" wiring schemes in our pre-wired kits. Maybe, sometime down the line, we might have the resources to take on custom wiring requests. But, for now, we are sticking with what most folks want: tried and true wiring schemes.
Are y'all planning to do any videos concerning potentiometer tapers? I have nearly everything I need to mod my guitar, except one of your F-spaced 50's wind bridge soapbars (you'll have my order soon). While I wait for that, I'm still trying to make sure I've ordered the right pots. I'm looking to replicate the sound and playability of a '57 Les Paul Jr. and part of that is trying to get as much versatility out of a single pickup as I can. I ordered a 500k vintage taper volume pot and a 250k linear taper tone pot (the capacitor is a .022 Orange Drop). It'll be wired 50's style. I'm settled on the values, but the information available on the internet on pot tapers is all over the place. Some say that the volume and tone controls in guitars are supposed to work differently than those in other electronics like amps. Some say that our ears don't hear changes in sound in a linear fashion. Some say that it all just depends on how you want your particular controls to work. Some people report completely different experiences from having used the same exact thing. It's confusing trying to figure out who really knows what they're talking about.
Not at the moment, no. While it's a pertinent topic, it's not one that would be easily demonstrated in any sort of replicable way. The problem is that the variables are too appreciable. We couldn't guarantee that we would be able to turn the pots at the exact same speed each time and, without that, it would be an apples to oranges comparison. Since the curve is most apparent with motion, we would need to isolate that as our control. You could get the same sound from two different tapers, just at different places on the dial. So, without being able to demonstrate the entire curve, smoothly, evenly, and the exact same on multiple tapers, there's no good way to exemplify the differences. But, should some sort of way of doing it present itself, we may take it on in the future.
@@LollarPickups Thanks, fellas. I appreciate the reply. As they say, these smaller components aren't expensive. If one thing doesn't work for me, I'll try something different, till I find something that does.
Ok this is my take! I was surprised that I really hated the orange drop sound. It was brittle and harsh. Both my Gretsch have orange drops in them, so I was surprised how much I didn’t like them considering how much I love my guitars. If I’m not mistaken my SG special has Bumblebee caps. Honestly I thought the mustard cap sounded the best followed closely by the bumblebee and the orange drop was just sucking hind tit. Just curious what makers use mustard caps in their guitars!
Yes, we have had that one up for a bit. While the information is still applicable, we would really like to redo it to offer a better overall experience for our viewers. So, when we have some time between other videos, we plan to re-shoot some of our older video offerings.
It's really impossible to tell how pickup height affects the sound of a non-linear system like a guitar amp. Compression, harmonic generation, dynamic freq damping, etc mask the effect. Physics dictates a loss of transient strength and lower note harmonics, as well as any effects of magnetic string pull on note timbre. The effects of string pull on note timbre depends on pickup position, but decreased transient strength translates as less punch and highs in the attack. The decrease in lower note harmonics may be less obvious, and depends on coil wire gauge & density.
@@GCKelloch I would say it's absolutely possible to tell how pickup height affects both the sound and the feel of the guitar sound. Whenever I get a new guitar or new pickups it takes some real playing time with small adjustments to get them where I want them. I think my LP with P90's is especially sensitive, more so than my Strat or Telecasters.
If the variables you are trying to eliminate may cause confusion or bias on comparison, then that of itself shows that any differences as so slight as to be completely ignorable. $200 PIO cap or turning the lights off? Hmm, okay. I didn't hear enough difference to make me want to consider using any cap other than simply avoiding "cheap random crapacitors". Bite in with the pick a bit, lay off the tone to taste or even re-EQ the amp or compression slightly. These things have WAY more effectiveness as part of the feedback loop of playing an instrument and your playing responding to the sound, right?
I agree. Player input is 100% where tone starts. Taylor Guitars used to refer to this as "bone tone" and it's the innate sound that comes from the player's style; pick attack, strum placement, fingering, vibrato, etc. These all add up to a very unique variable that cannot be reproduced or accommodated for entirely by a pickup, instrument, cable, pedal, amp, or effect. The argument could be made that, by addressing every minute variable at every instance, you could sculpt the sound you want. And this is true to an appreciable degree, but this still doesn't really change the player's input and natural playing style. This playing style is inherent in their sound, it's like their sonic fingerprint. A different cap material will not accommodate this in a way that justifies the effort to change the capacitor.
To be honest, I couldn't hear an appreciable difference in tone quality. For this reason I can be comfortable in choosing capacitors by values first, and apprearance second.
Can someone help me. I am looking for some hot pickups for my Strat. I tend to like Texas specials. But looking for something different. I heard some vintage Lollar in a Telle that were phenomenal.
Absolutely! You can reach out to our customer service team via the contact information in the "About" section on our channel. They can answer all your questions and point you in the right direction towards achieving the tones you're chasing.
The only thing that matters in a passive guitar HF rolloff circuit is the capacitor's value. This video did a nice job of comparing three different types of capacitors, all with the same rated value. But capacitor rated values have a tolerance of plus or minus a certain percent (+/- 20%, +/- 10%, etc.). So, without measuring the actual value of each capacitor, the test can't be assumed to point out any tonal differences of different types of capacitors. For a valid comparison test like this, all three capacitors would need to be matched in actual value.
Yep, and that's exactly what this video aims to demonstrate. I would think most folks doing this sort of thing would know that there are varying tolerance specs involved. To ensure that the test was as controlled as possible, we went through bags of each type of cap to find the ones closest to the stated value to be included in this test. And, in doing so, we actually landed much closer to the stated value than one could expect from even the tightest tolerances. I can't recall the exact values off the top of my head, but I remember that they spec'ed out somewhere in the thousandths from the stated values. We did the same in our Tone Truth video on capacitor value as well.
I honestly thought I was going to have a really cool bumblebee looking capacitor inside my guitar electronics cavity. Boy oh boy was I disappointed! Aww shucks!
But do you like how it sounds? If so, that's what really matters. If you aren't happy with the sound you are getting from it, hopefully our videos on capacitors can help you narrow down the search for the best value/material for your needs.
How close were the caps value cause even two of the same caps with only 1% diff sound diff. After many yrs of experimenting this combined with any possible placebo makes more diff. than material. After all since signal never actually passes thru a cap all they do is charge n dis-charge. How fast determines how it sounds, and how fast is based on its value.
You're absolutely correct! This is why we did another video in this series that discusses cap value as well. As for the individual cap values, I don't recall the actual values anymore, I'm sorry. But I can recall that we used a multimeter to test dozens and dozens of capacitors and used the ones with the closest values. If I recall, our meter clocked them all to within a VERY small difference of a fraction of a percent difference between the three.
@@LollarPickups Yea I use a meter to chk mine as well. Even meters have a %'s of error. I have a small S.S. Marshal I use at my bench to test guitars I work on. After getting my amps sounding how I liked I decided to see if I could improve the little Marshal. It uses a 220pf treble cap in the tone stack. I have some 1pf caps and adding 1 of those making 221pf I noticed a difference. I was surprised as I would have never believed that little would be heard. So if that's the case and knowing how caps work and what science say's about caps I believe it's value differences not material people hear. And better is diff for everyone. In my yrs of doing this I've noticed many times just a change in tone sounds better because you've gotten used to the way it was.
thanks so much! been trying to chase down this artists tone for a minute! th-cam.com/video/bIAlfoIE9Ic/w-d-xo.html hit CC for english! and this was a huge help! thank you!
my ears are shit. However, the bumble bee seemed fuller or more open? TO me. haha. It would shatter my world to do this with vintage tubes. or tube amp vs ….. or coke and pepsi….
I have a great pair of cans on, and I can't tell a difference. The re-amp sounds equally bad in all of them ;) I'm half-joking. It was a good demonstration that illustrates the irrelevancy of capacitor material from a tonal standpoint.
Horses for courses, my friend. We understand the limitations of our reamping methods in a scenario such as this, but it really is the best way to provide as close to a level playing field as possible. In doing do, as you mentioned, we've illustrated how similar they really are and why the choice of capacitor has to be a personal one, based on the individual tastes of the player. Cheers!
I appreciate your videos, but you have it backwards according to electronics experts: Capacitors act as high-PASS filters, not low-pass filters. The greater the capacitor value, the lower the frequency below which (lows, mids) go to ground. Resistors act somewhat in reverse of that, though the best effect of putting a resistor in parallel with a capacitor is that it makes the cutoff frequency less sharp...more gradual. Hence, the concept behind "grease bucket" circuits, which not only use cap/resistor in the grounded line, but an additional resistor in the "hot" wire. What tone pots do primarily is cut the resonant peak out more or less, which makes the lower tones appear to be boosted or cut...but, it's an illusion, deriving from the ratio of lows to highs. As to whether the capacitor material makes a difference...many experts thing it is "in the mind" of people who claim to be able to tell the difference. But, vendors are happy to charge, for expensive caps, between 10 & 100 times the cost of cheap ones, for those who insist on being able to distinguish between them. Ultimately, the best idea is to add a graphic equalizer pedal, an active control, which is more precise than passive controls, because active controls can both boost & cut frequency ranges...whereas passive controls can only cut them.
Thanks for watching and for your comment. I'm sorry for any confusion. The capacitor does, as you say, act as a high-pass filter. But, since the end result of a guitar's passive tone circuit is that everything passing through that capacitor goes to ground, the net outcome is a low pass filter effect. This is because the only thing that "passes" through to the amplifier is what is lower than the cutoff frequency. Also, the tone circuit doesn't just cut the resonant peak, that would be more like a notch filter. With guitar tone circuits, the resonant frequency peak tends to move lower as you increase the amount of attenuation (turning the knob down), which sounds different in different circuits due to the combination of frequency and Q. The frequency of the resonant peak is determined by the cutoff frequency and the peak's level is inversely determined by the attenuation level. So, as the frequency dips lower into lower frequencies so too does the resonant peak. As the amplitude of the frequencies above the cutoff decreases, the level of the resonant peak actually increases. And the narrower the cutoff, the tighter and higher the peak. This is why some folks say that a .015 cap can sound somewhat like a wah effect when the tone control is rolled up and down because the peak shifts in frequency and amplitude. Of course, this is all an oversimplification that doesn't include things like impedance, inductance, or any number of other related variables. But this is all originally only intended to make things clearer for the average guitarist, not necessarily aimed at electrical engineers and the like. I hope this clarifies things a bit for you and other viewers. Thanks again and take care.
The easiest way to debunk the "material matters" argument is simply to point out that capacitors weren't invented for guitars. They are used in millions of other electronic devices. If the material effected the output in any way, there would be millions of engineers talking about it and writing papers on the subject. That isn't happening. Believing material matters is just as insane as believing the earth is flat. However, material DOES matter in other ways. Ceramic caps are garbage as far as consistency. Their capacitance changes over time and is effected by temperature. They are also microphonic, so a potential source of noise. Metallic film caps won't sound different, but they are vastly superior to ceramics in these other important areas.
Absolutely! But folks will still swear that they can hear the magic. And more power to 'em, if they think they can. They're free to use what they like and the rest of us will do the same, and we'll all be happier for it. Everybody wins. But you've raised a very valid point here. Thanks for sharing.
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More than caps material, values are the most tone changing.
I just had an amazing experience with tone capacitors values.
The usual values, we know the differences in sound. Most of the time as soon as you set the potentiometer to zero the sound is muffled, unusable.
With 0.015uf it is the least worst. I experimented with much lower values, between 0.0047uf and 0.0082uf. It sounds like a wahwah pedal stuck in the middle position, when the tone pot is at zero. With some mid/treble frequencies which are preserved. By choosing the right value I reached an extremely interesting and unique sound, and above all very usable. Not a dull, uninteresting sound.
I tested these values with a single p90 junior LP (50's wiring). The sound is amazing. I think that for stratocaster style pickups or humbuckers, other values could be better, but not certain.
Very nicely done with eliminating the variables - Kudos! I would be interested in seeing the output signal run through a spectrogram 😉
Lollar drives a stake through the hearts of cork-sniffing boutique hall-monitors! Thanks, gents - Deeve
Hey now, cork sniffers are free to sniff all the cork that want. But sometimes truth bombs and information in videos like this can give the rest of us the assurance of knowing that we're running good stuff too.
I honestly have no problem with people playing what they like, whether it's the cheapest or most expensive thing. But it's, like you say, when they act like hall monitors and try to be "gatekeepers of good" about it all -- as if spending more money on something that does the exact same thing somehow automatically makes them better -- that's what crosses the line for me. Lie and let live...
I’m one of those cork sniffers and snobs. I realize that a lot of stuff can be negligible or even BS but nerding out on capacitors is fun. Capacitors are like audio jewelry. They look cool
F'n love it!!! Truth!!! As a 40 year+ trontech I always laughed at folks that espoused cap snake oil nonsense.
Yep! I'm all for folks chasing their own happiness. It's when they start acting like they're better or everyone else is wrong that it bugs me. It's not that important from an objective standpoint. So, as important as it may be for them personally, it's completely subjective and there are no absolute "right" or "wrong" values or materials, only individual preference. Live and let live.
Thank you. This was great- and underscores for me the integrity Lollar brings to everything they do. Having myself been obsessed with designing my own tone for 40 years, I was for most that a "cap is a cap, a resistor a resistor" guy. I was sure that even the real signal-handling differences engineers know exist between the materials were, for practical purposes, drowned-out in the mud of non-linearities and noise inherent in this kind of messy system.
And indeed, some of my very best designs used only ceramics and carbon resistors for tone. But I learned over time they weren't really replicable- even if I hand-matched every cap and resistor. Why?
Well, with the caps it's two reasons: Heat and Acoustics. If you want some fun, hook a ceramic cap up to your capacitance meter then just squeeze it hard. Its capacitance changes considerably even w/the temp of your fingers! Then for a real shock, shock it with your heat gun or soldering iron.
Bottom line: Ceramic caps wander wildly with temperature. And in terms of acoustics, it's well knowns: ceramic caps, being piezoelectric, literally are [terrible] little microphones & speakers.
Now, here's the hard part: I actually think in my very favorite rig designs, both of those factors inadvertently were adding to the quality rather than subtracting. IOW, when I was A/B'ing caps in sensitive (high-gain/high-impedance) parts of my circuits at full volume, unwittingly I choose values sometimes because they just sounded "more interesting." And while I attributed that strictly to value then, I now realize that cap voltage-rating (as being proportional to dielectric width, thus affecting microphonics) sometimes mattered more than value in such high-vibration settings.
Oh, and about resistors, that's easy: Once OpAmps were good enough that one's entire generated noise was less than a single carbon resistor's, it was time to go all metal. Maybe it's time for us all to have wirewound or plastic film pots on our guitars/amps- but no, not worth it to me, my rig's faint hiss is nice 🙂
But about Caps: I'm torn, there really are old designs I've never been able to replicate the magic because (turns out) the schematic wasn't the whole story. But for practical reasons, I also now only use film caps in sensitive circuits- because I do need to replicate circuits, and they're quite temp & age & acoustically stable. That said I adore MLCC anywhere I used to need an electrolytic 😂
u know what matters more for great tone? Having a killer set of pups and that's what Jason provides. Love em all , thanks Jason for producing some of the best sounding pups in the industry!
Hopefully our pickups can contribute to great tone. Then it's really win/win!
I was drawn to 3 for some reason. I felt like it sounded better when strummed compared to the other two. Never even thought about capacitors until now, because I'm in the middle of building my first tele.
Yeah I haven’t ever cared at all about such things but I thought the same. Although oddly enough and I feel ridiculous using this language the 2nd one sorta had this weird filtery thing going on with the clean that was almost like a… :( quack? I have no idea how to describe this BUT there was something there that was different. The last one seemed the most… harmonic? I hate trying to describe this stuff it feels so ridiculous but it was almost like something with the overtones.
nice. difference not enough for me to care, but i preferred the way the orange drops worked because that is what i'm used to
And, honestly, that is all that matters. If you like it best, then it's best for you. I don't have much preference; I just want to like what I hear.
Paper in oil baby... I could heard it when it was first played... But since I've listened to that cap in my 1968 Les Paul for over 50 years, I shouldn't be surprised. Great video. Thank you!
Thanks for taking the time to analyse the # caps. Although the difference is very subtle, I tend to prefer the #3 and discovered it was the bumble bees. I have them in my LP and they sound sweet and mellow. I have an I-35 LC fitted with your low wind Imperials: awesome pickups. The caps are polyester film and foil (Jupiter I think). They allow for a wide tonal range and I tend to roll back the tone quite a bit to cut off high frequancies. Being a '50s wiring, the tone pot influences the volume so I have to find a sweet spot. Thanks for uploading guys: Jason is a tone wizard !! 🎸🎵👍🏻
Exactly! There definitely IS a difference, and you're right -- it is a very subtle difference. And that difference may, in fact, just be due to the small variation in cap value as much as anything else. But that's what makes doing stuff like this fun. We weren't 100% sure what the results would be before (or even during) the making of this video.
In the end, it really is up to the individual player's preference. If someone can hear a difference and they choose to go with the one that they like better; great! And if someone can't hear a difference and they choose to go with the one that suits their wallet best, or if they just want to buy the most expensive one just to be able to say it has the "fanciest" components; so be it. As long as they are happy with the results, then everybody wins.
Knowing that it doesn't make as big of a difference, as often claimed on gear forums and advertisement copy is a good, level playing field from which to start. And that was the main takeaway of this video for me.
I appreciate you for doing this, ld like to think I can hear minute subtlety variances in audio and tone, which maybe other's can't
or even care to pay attention to. But l could not here a huge difference in the caps other than the perceived volumes when the tone was rolled down. Seems like any difference in the cap types is minimal and so subtle that most will not be able to discern any difference.
Thank you for the unbiased take on this! I've always been happy with orange drops, and confirmed, I have no pressing need to swap 'em out!
Agreed!
What actually is more important to me than tone is the feel! I've played instruments and amps that are my style, they had the tone, but somehow not the feel, and hence I didn't really like them. On the other hand I have played instruments and amps that were not really my style, but had all the right feel, and I was loving them! Point being, you have to play them to know if you like them, because it is (almost) impossible to get the feel from a video!!
Well that was a fun little experiment with helpful info! Thanks! If I had to narrow my choice of pickups it would be Lollar P-90's and 70's Gibson tarbacks. The Lollars are my faves tho.
This is awsome. I love the process explanation.
Awesome, thank you! We just wanted to be sure that we made it as clear and understandable as possible. I'm glad to hear it seems to be resonating with folks.
Thanks for making this video. It's a year old, but maybe you'll see my comments in awhile. Jason Lollar did a demo for Audio Engineering Society, I think is was, around 2002. He used a converted sewing machine to wind a pickup. We loved it! Re: caps, I could hear small differences. I correctly guessed that #2 is the orange drop. They sound a bit harsher and more trebly to me. But sometimes I want that. Other times I prefer Russian paper in oils, which sound darker and smoother. I made a cap switcher/tester so I could just alligate into the guitar and pick the cap I like best. I'll share a private, crazy theory I have about why caps of the same value sound different:
Recall that a capacitor has a "capacity" of some amount of current (electrons actually, I think it is, before it fills up.) For higher AC frequencies that don't fill it up, they are passed through the cap. But lower freqs, that keep going in one polarity before turning around, they are blocked. Hence the cap is a high pass filter. The lower the pot's resistance setting, the more of the signal can hit the cap and the highs passed. Here's the interesting part. The material the cap is made of may effect how smoothly or roughly the signal is affected around the cutoff freq of the cap. And especially if the cap is before the tone pot in the circuit (my own voodoo belief - I know), the tone is affected by that process. That's before considering any reflections or eddies, if you will, that get reflected back into the circuit and the output.
I don't have a oscilloscope good enough take a look and test the theory. But if you want to check it out that would be great.
You are aligned with my experiences as well. I ended up preferring pio caps in mahogany guitars. Vitamin Ts oil caps in strats, bumblebees in thin sounding guitars like Ibanezes as it slightly fattens them up.
Having a frequency analyzer on the output signal would have been great. Compare all 3 final signals... Bumble bees are pure marketing. Mostly plastic with a small cap inserted. Including the typical green Fender chicklets and the ceramic disks seen on imports would have been great too. The 3 tested are relatively high price.
As for the frequency analyzer, I agree. I actually thought of that after I was done editing the video and, by then it was too late and would've taken too much additional resources to go back and add it.
As for the other cap types, the main point is the same: if the values are closely matched, then there will be very little discernable difference in sound. We originally wanted to include a ceramic and do film-and-foil, paper-in-oil, and ceramic, but the ceramic caps that we had were all WAAAAAAY off spec, so it wasn't a good apples-to-apples comparison. So, instead we just used a couple different types of film caps.
Great comparison, I prefered #3 and it's what I just ordered in the Telecaster wiring harness I just ordered along with the 52 pickups so I'm glad I ordered the paper and oil.
I can hear it! Number 3, it’s got an airy quality to, almost 3D. Ballsy while retaining all its clarity and articulation. I’ve got a Kot, Rat, Timmy, Klon on my board running into a Fuchs….
😂😂 sorry, couldn’t help but try out my best GearPage impersonation😂😂. I could hear interesting differences in the cap value but will never expensive on caps again. Thanks for this!
I have to admit... You had me there for second. Haha!
Thanks for watching!
Very interesting. Thanks. I for one would love to see a comparison done on a Strat with 50s wiring vs modern.
I already planned on doing a similar one for stock and '50s Les Paul wiring sometime in the future. This is another great idea, thanks!
3 sounds different, a bit more aggressive with like more "tremble chorus" on the dirty sounds. I liked it best. Went into this test expecting zero difference tbh, but to my ears they did sound a bit different. Interesting stuff. Thank you for this!
Yeah, every cap may have a slightly different fingerprint on the sound. It's funny how we all go into things like this with different expectations and sometimes we're completely surprised with the results.
But, at the end of the day, it's often the cap's value that determines what the resulting tone sounds like. So even two of the same material and marked as the same value could have enough variance in the value to make it sound different than the next. All that matters is whether or not the player likes what they hear.
Thanks for taking the time to watch and comment regarding what you heard. Cheers!
That was really interesting! The difference is honestly so small it's basically negligible, but the caps i ended up kinda leaning on are the same ones I have been used to using. I wonder if that's me hearing a profile I'm used to and nothing else. Honestly i now believe that I'm completely indifferent to cap material moving forward🙃
I can definitely discern differences between the three caps. It's important to use one's own ears, and there is no substitute for trying this experiment in-person. Preferences are personal choices.
Thanks for making this video!!
A fool and his money are soon separated
That is a interesting test. I played it 3 or 4 times (clean section) and there is a distinct difference between cap1 vs 2 and 3, and less so between 2 and 3, 3 being a little warmer. Also a notable difference in sound at 100% which surprised me. Thank you!
Glad you found it interesting. And, hopefully, it was also entertaining, if not informative. We appreciate you watching it and providing feedback. Cheers!
@@LollarPickups On one of your blog articles, it is mentioned that the difference in tone is due to variables in playing/picking. In this test, those variables were eliminated but I hear a difference. Am I imagining things ? :)
The number one thing contributing to any tonal difference that you may be hearing is the actual VALUE of the capacitors. We tried to get them as closely matched as possible, but they are not exact.
And, while you may hear some degree of difference between them, others may hear no difference at all. Some of that may be due to different types of damage done to different peoples' hearing over the years, resulting in differences in perceivable frequency response "holes", where one person can hear some frequencies more of less than others.
And some of the difference may also just be chocked up to a placebo effect. If you weren't anticipating differences and listening so intently, perhaps you might not have noticed any differences at all. Much like how many people never notice when a recording drummer uses different snare drums from one song to the next on an album; many people simply don't care enough about the sound of the snare to scrutinize it enough to notice any difference.
@@LollarPickups Well I live in a pretty quiet place, don't drive and work at home, but its not a reason ;) your explanation makes sense. I actually ordered a bunch of different capacitors to try for myself as well. thank you for taking the time.
This is a great video, very well done
Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it!
BRAVO...!!!
Congratulations on your decision of set-up👍
So much misinformation has been floated down this river it's ridiculous.
Some folks say they achieved better tone by switching the direction of caps leads.🙄
Thanks for this helpful video 😎👍
😎👍❤🖖
Thank you for your kind words and input! Hopefully folks will start to get wise to some of the misinformation that is out there. If our videos can contribute to debunking some of those myths, all the better!
Actually there is a difference in what way you put in the caps, because of the way they are wound, but I don´t believe in much difference at all in tone caps. Serial caps means a lot,
parallel not so much.
Love my Lollar regals! Looking forward to hearing more from you wonderful people. Maybe talk about pickup magnet materials next? AlNiCo? CuNiFe?
These are great ideas! We've actually had them planned since the first of these Tone Truth videos were in the works.
I came to this thinking that there I could hear no difference and I was surprised that I could, I won’t try to qualitatively describe my thoughts on my cork-sniffing experience except that I liked the Orange drops the best. I really did not want to say it, but there you have it.
That's just it; while not everyone can even hear a difference at all, some folks can. You seem to be in the latter camp and, in your case, your preference matters far more than anyone else's opinion. Heck, I'm of the belief that, even is someone can't hear a difference and they just want to say that they do to justify getting the most (or least) expensive option, then that's the right choice *for them*. Perception is reality for most folks and so they should pursue their own enjoyment in their guitar playing. If it makes someone happy and it doesn't hurt anyone else, then it's fair play. Thanks for taking the time to share your input and take care!
That was interesting. Thanks for doing that. I’d find the same type of test with different capacitor ratings (15, 22, 47) instead of different styles of the same rating
You're welcome and thank you for watching!
As for the cap value comparison, here's exactly what you're looking for: th-cam.com/video/0Fzsc7uqc3g/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=LollarPickups
I've had a Lollar vintage blonde set in my vintage cbs era strat since 2007. Lollars destroy the factory pickups and give me the most satisfying tone. It's not an early strat, sure, but it sounds like one! Some of my favorite clean tones are Hendrix, Knoffler, The Ventures, Gilmour etc. I wonder is there any difference between the 2007's and today?
Not so much as changes in the functional design of the pickups themselves, but we have made small changes on some occasions to things like the mounting holes (particularly the covers).
Lollar content! Way!
You could take this all one step further by using PreSonus to create a second raw signal out of phase with the original raw one - then mixing the two to maximize cancellation. That particular mix then becoming your baseline for capacitor comparisons. Telling you the limits of the system, where whatever remains is simply artifacts from the practical limitations of the entire process.
Then you could use those settings to mix signals from the various tone caps. Original raw through one capacitor type, OOP raw through another. Mix them down using your established settings, then anything above and beyond the already known artifacts would represent actual differences between any two capacitor types. Obviously you would want to use caps very closely matched in actual measured capacitance - probably within 1 or 2% of each other.
If all you see is indistinguishable from the baseline then you know that - at minimum - any theoretical differences between caps are smaller than the base noise level of an otherwise very simple but precise audio system.
BUT before anyone bothers to do this, first ask yourself - If actual differences between cap types were so easily and verifiably identified why haven't any of the sellers of pricey caps already done this sort of demonstration?
I'm laughing at myself. I didn't hear a difference. A student of mine came in with a strat he just build up and I could tell he used an orange drop cap. I didn't like it. But in this video I couldn't tell. I thought I liked ceramic caps the best. They're the cheapest ones so I'll stick with those. Thanks for the trouble. I love your pickups
We're glad we could help folks like yourself narrow the search for their preferred tone. In the end, all that matters is whether or not *YOU* like it!
Jason looks like Pat Quilter's brother. Two geniuses of a feather...
Have you done a video on 250k vs 500k pots? I recently bought an Eastman T64 with Lollar Dog Ear P90's that were wired with 250k pots. I thought it sounded a bit dark so I swapped the pots to 500k and it made a huge difference! This guitar with the Lollar Dog Ears sounds incredible now!
We haven't, though we may in the future, if enough folks think it would be helpful. To your point, though, our P90 pickups really do sound best with 500k pots. That's what they were intended to be paired with.
@@LollarPickups agreed, they sound much better wired up with 500k. I asked the folks at Eastman why they went the 250k route and they said they wanted to stay in the tradition of that style guitar (kind of an ES-330 hollowbody). Anyways, no disrespect towards Eastman, the guitar is brilliant but I'm glad I decided to take the plunge and see what changing the pots would do. It brought the guitar to life and I can still roll off the tone if I want to go for a jazzier sound.
I didn't like the Mustard as much, but otherwise I honestly couldn't tell a difference between the Orange Drop and paper-in-oil, liked them both. They both have a "classic" sound to me. Honestly, I think if you can nitpick your guitar for something as little as capacitor material, your gear is probably a-okay :)
I was hoping I was wrong. PIO wins, hands down. I really miss a Radio Shack.
I'm gonna be 100 percent honest here. I actually guessed the capacitors right!!!! But not because of the sound. I guessed based completely on my luck and how it follows me through life. All three sounded awesome. But, I have the mustards in my Les Paul. I wire my guitars myself. I have the orange drops in my strat. And I have an orange drop for a strat (or at least that's what most use for a strat 47 orange drops) in my SG special. I'm about to change that to 50s wiring. I found the way you wire it actually does change sound also. I like each guitar I have to sound different, if I can. I don't think if my strat or Les Paul as sounding better than one or the other. Just each is better for what ever I'm trying to achieve. But anyway, in your video. The first sounded good, and to me the second sounded better. So i guessed the first was the mustard and the second the orange. Why? Simple because I wished I had more orange drops caps to put in my stuff and I don't. Hahahaha and the third had to be the bumblebee because It sounded best (so to speak, I don't really mean better) simply because, I don't own a single bumblebee cap. Hahahaha I always follow my luck. If my gut says left, I go right brother. If my gut says trust her, run for your life. But back to my Les Paul with the mustards. It sounds better for tool. My strat with the orange drops sound better for skynyrd. At least through my set up. You can all kinds of things to change how things sound these days. I just thought it was hilarious I guessed all three right, based on my luck. I would like to see the same test, but tried between more modern and 50s wiring. Super interested in that. It's alot of work wiring stuff up just to see how it sounds and I'm only basing my opinion off things I have seen in TH-cam. And you can never know who to trust and who not. I watched a video recently of a guy putting a 150 dollar gunstreet wiring kit in a cheap guitar and it made a big difference. You could hear it. He used 50s wiring though. I know the kit he got, you can get everything in it except for the bumblebee, for between 25 and 40 dollars. 30 dollar bumblebee, 70 dollars. I know people gotta make money. But it made me wonder if it was the way it was wired that made such the difference. I know the value of the cap was probably also different than what was in the original guitar also. I'll look to see if you guys have already tried that, but if not, I would like to see it.
I thought I would put 1 on my MM 50s telecaster expecting to be the paper-in-oil one. And 2 is Orange Drop already in my Les Paul. and I was right about Orange Drop but the mustard one sounds awesome and P-I-O sounds really dull
The schematics at 1:40 is clear and correct when the tone knob is at 10. When the pot comes in (i.e. at 5) it starts to cut highs on the frequencies below the cutoff. What would be interesting is to show what happens when tone pot comes in progressively. Thank you. P.S. Excellent video.
I actually wanted to do this exact thing, but I couldn't come up with an easy or affordable way to implement a computer-controlled motor to turn the control at that exact same rate every time. I did actually film a few short shots of me manually rolling each one down. But unfortunately, the results were too inconsistent to be used. It turns out it's quite hard to perfectly recreate that sort of motion three times. Haha!
IF - that's a BIG "IF" - there was any difference, I was unable to spot it.
Right?! And, honestly, any difference there may be is far more likely to be a result of difference in value, not materials. Thanks for watching and for contributing to the conversation!
@@LollarPickupsi heard once that oil filled caps degrade over time, and that's what changes the value and tone.
Quality content! 👍
Halfway through and this must be the nerdiest guitar component video I have ever seen.
But I can't stop watching.....
And at the end I could'nt hear any significant difference between the three.
I like when someone make a blind comparison such as this. Since eye is one of the biggest influence on why we choose certain gear or component. Can you make the same comparison with humbucker ? And maybe with shorter duration because all your methodology has been explained here.
We plan to do a humbucker comparison, actually, but we hadn't thought to do it in a "blind comparison" format. We'll have to take that idea into consideration.
Sprague Orange Drop has a certain sound I like with light picking @ 10
Commented during the blind testing.
On clean sound - Cap 2 sounds a tad different and better. Maybe just a bit warmer and more pleasant. Especially as the tone was rolled off.
On the distorted sound - Not a very apparent difference. But cap 3 sounded a bit inferior somehow.
Very surprised. Didn't match my expectations. Trying again.
I didnt like number 1 until the dirty 0%, but between them all 2 had the best all around sound, IMHO (echoing the closing message, this is my opinion, not a statement of fact. If you liked 1 or 3, and it works for the sound you want to make, go for it! Ill solder it into your guitar myself! No worries). Over the whole test the sound of 2 and 3 really just depended on the style of music and playing Id imagine someone using them with, overall they both sounded good. And honestly, real talk, no joke, put a gun to my head and I still wouldnt be able to tell you which was which hearing it live or on an album. Although I did let out a "HA!" when I saw 2 was the orange drop. So.... yeah, play what you like, the only wrong decision is letting someone elses opinion ruin how you enjoy playing. I play .028uF blue ceramic HV caps (3 10000pF soldered together because its what I had laying around and the .022uF I had in it wasnt tickling my fancy anymore) and it sounds fine for me. At the end of the day were supposed to enjoy music, making or listening. So dont stress about whats right and wrong, just explore and have fun!
Brilliantly stated. I especially liked the part where you said, "play what you like, the only wrong decision is letting someone else's opinion ruin how you enjoy playing."
Thanks for watching and for the pleasant contribution to the conversation.
Pretty amazing demo.
I'm pretty new at this stuff, but would it be more true to say there's a difference in what we DO NOT hear?
One thing I did not hear was addressed, and it may not matter, was to what tolerance each cap was manufactured.
But a very cool variable eliminator!! Wow.
No matter where I go for a listen , I can hear a difference and enjoy the orange drop. And actually listening to some others, I secondarily enjoy tropical fish.
Thanks again for such an awesome demo!!
Great question! I can't recall the exact tolerances that these were sold under, but we went through literal handfuls of caps and they were each measured independently. Then we used the ones that were the closest in value (down to the hundredths or maybe even thousandths) so that they were all, effectively the same value. The value differences between caps in this were all appreciably less than the normal tolerances that are commonly offered under what is considered to be very tight specs. We wanted to ensure that the comparisons were as consistent as we were able to control.
Oh,right. I believe you did mention something about that then. My bad.
So then this IS the best video. Do you guys build custom wiring also?
Not at this time. We only offer more "standard" wiring schemes in our pre-wired kits. Maybe, sometime down the line, we might have the resources to take on custom wiring requests. But, for now, we are sticking with what most folks want: tried and true wiring schemes.
But....but... I can't like orange drop. Well now what do I do?
Are y'all planning to do any videos concerning potentiometer tapers? I have nearly everything I need to mod my guitar, except one of your F-spaced 50's wind bridge soapbars (you'll have my order soon).
While I wait for that, I'm still trying to make sure I've ordered the right pots. I'm looking to replicate the sound and playability of a '57 Les Paul Jr. and part of that is trying to get as much versatility out of a single pickup as I can.
I ordered a 500k vintage taper volume pot and a 250k linear taper tone pot (the capacitor is a .022 Orange Drop). It'll be wired 50's style. I'm settled on the values, but the information available on the internet on pot tapers is all over the place.
Some say that the volume and tone controls in guitars are supposed to work differently than those in other electronics like amps. Some say that our ears don't hear changes in sound in a linear fashion. Some say that it all just depends on how you want your particular controls to work. Some people report completely different experiences from having used the same exact thing. It's confusing trying to figure out who really knows what they're talking about.
Not at the moment, no. While it's a pertinent topic, it's not one that would be easily demonstrated in any sort of replicable way. The problem is that the variables are too appreciable. We couldn't guarantee that we would be able to turn the pots at the exact same speed each time and, without that, it would be an apples to oranges comparison. Since the curve is most apparent with motion, we would need to isolate that as our control. You could get the same sound from two different tapers, just at different places on the dial. So, without being able to demonstrate the entire curve, smoothly, evenly, and the exact same on multiple tapers, there's no good way to exemplify the differences. But, should some sort of way of doing it present itself, we may take it on in the future.
@@LollarPickups Thanks, fellas. I appreciate the reply. As they say, these smaller components aren't expensive. If one thing doesn't work for me, I'll try something different, till I find something that does.
Ok this is my take! I was surprised that I really hated the orange drop sound. It was brittle and harsh. Both my Gretsch have orange drops in them, so I was surprised how much I didn’t like them considering how much I love my guitars. If I’m not mistaken my SG special has Bumblebee caps. Honestly I thought the mustard cap sounded the best followed closely by the bumblebee and the orange drop was just sucking hind tit. Just curious what makers use mustard caps in their guitars!
No doubt some players will swear that even though you can’t hear any difference the guitar REACTS differently and FEELS different in their hands 🙄
Number two I'd say.
Can you do one on pickup height?
In the future, possibly, yes.
@@LollarPickups I actually found a video from 13 years ago in your Playlist.
Yes, we have had that one up for a bit. While the information is still applicable, we would really like to redo it to offer a better overall experience for our viewers. So, when we have some time between other videos, we plan to re-shoot some of our older video offerings.
It's really impossible to tell how pickup height affects the sound of a non-linear system like a guitar amp. Compression, harmonic generation, dynamic freq damping, etc mask the effect. Physics dictates a loss of transient strength and lower note harmonics, as well as any effects of magnetic string pull on note timbre. The effects of string pull on note timbre depends on pickup position, but decreased transient strength translates as less punch and highs in the attack. The decrease in lower note harmonics may be less obvious, and depends on coil wire gauge & density.
@@GCKelloch I would say it's absolutely possible to tell how pickup height affects both the sound and the feel of the guitar sound. Whenever I get a new guitar or new pickups it takes some real playing time with small adjustments to get them where I want them. I think my LP with P90's is especially sensitive, more so than my Strat or Telecasters.
If the variables you are trying to eliminate may cause confusion or bias on comparison, then that of itself shows that any differences as so slight as to be completely ignorable. $200 PIO cap or turning the lights off? Hmm, okay. I didn't hear enough difference to make me want to consider using any cap other than simply avoiding "cheap random crapacitors". Bite in with the pick a bit, lay off the tone to taste or even re-EQ the amp or compression slightly. These things have WAY more effectiveness as part of the feedback loop of playing an instrument and your playing responding to the sound, right?
I agree. Player input is 100% where tone starts. Taylor Guitars used to refer to this as "bone tone" and it's the innate sound that comes from the player's style; pick attack, strum placement, fingering, vibrato, etc. These all add up to a very unique variable that cannot be reproduced or accommodated for entirely by a pickup, instrument, cable, pedal, amp, or effect.
The argument could be made that, by addressing every minute variable at every instance, you could sculpt the sound you want. And this is true to an appreciable degree, but this still doesn't really change the player's input and natural playing style. This playing style is inherent in their sound, it's like their sonic fingerprint. A different cap material will not accommodate this in a way that justifies the effort to change the capacitor.
Did you 'Short' each cap immediately prior to each test?
To be honest, I couldn't hear an appreciable difference in tone quality. For this reason I can be comfortable in choosing capacitors by values first, and apprearance second.
Can someone help me. I am looking for some hot pickups for my Strat. I tend to like Texas specials. But looking for something different. I heard some vintage Lollar in a Telle that were phenomenal.
Absolutely! You can reach out to our customer service team via the contact information in the "About" section on our channel. They can answer all your questions and point you in the right direction towards achieving the tones you're chasing.
The only thing that matters in a passive guitar HF rolloff circuit is the capacitor's value. This video did a nice job of comparing three different types of capacitors, all with the same rated value. But capacitor rated values have a tolerance of plus or minus a certain percent (+/- 20%, +/- 10%, etc.). So, without measuring the actual value of each capacitor, the test can't be assumed to point out any tonal differences of different types of capacitors. For a valid comparison test like this, all three capacitors would need to be matched in actual value.
Yep, and that's exactly what this video aims to demonstrate. I would think most folks doing this sort of thing would know that there are varying tolerance specs involved.
To ensure that the test was as controlled as possible, we went through bags of each type of cap to find the ones closest to the stated value to be included in this test. And, in doing so, we actually landed much closer to the stated value than one could expect from even the tightest tolerances. I can't recall the exact values off the top of my head, but I remember that they spec'ed out somewhere in the thousandths from the stated values. We did the same in our Tone Truth video on capacitor value as well.
@@LollarPickups Thank you for clarifying this. It was not apparent in the video that the capacitor values were closely matched.
I honestly thought I was going to have a really cool bumblebee looking capacitor inside my guitar electronics cavity. Boy oh boy was I disappointed! Aww shucks!
But do you like how it sounds? If so, that's what really matters. If you aren't happy with the sound you are getting from it, hopefully our videos on capacitors can help you narrow down the search for the best value/material for your needs.
How close were the caps value cause even two of the same caps with only 1% diff sound diff. After many yrs of experimenting this combined with any possible placebo makes more diff. than material. After all since signal never actually passes thru a cap all they do is charge n dis-charge. How fast determines how it sounds, and how fast is based on its value.
You're absolutely correct! This is why we did another video in this series that discusses cap value as well. As for the individual cap values, I don't recall the actual values anymore, I'm sorry. But I can recall that we used a multimeter to test dozens and dozens of capacitors and used the ones with the closest values. If I recall, our meter clocked them all to within a VERY small difference of a fraction of a percent difference between the three.
@@LollarPickups Yea I use a meter to chk mine as well. Even meters have a %'s of error. I have a small S.S. Marshal I use at my bench to test guitars I work on. After getting my amps sounding how I liked I decided to see if I could improve the little Marshal. It uses a 220pf treble cap in the tone stack. I have some 1pf caps and adding 1 of those making 221pf I noticed a difference. I was surprised as I would have never believed that little would be heard. So if that's the case and knowing how caps work and what science say's about caps I believe it's value differences not material people hear. And better is diff for everyone. In my yrs of doing this I've noticed many times just a change in tone sounds better because you've gotten used to the way it was.
Cap 2 on the 0% had more clarity to my ears.
Could have sounded different on an Apple I rather than Apple IIe
Glad you caught that. Sometimes, it's little things like that, that keep these videos a bit more interesting to watch (and make.)
i found i prefered tone control 0% on all caps
thanks so much! been trying to chase down this artists tone for a minute! th-cam.com/video/bIAlfoIE9Ic/w-d-xo.html hit CC for english! and this was a huge help! thank you!
my ears are shit. However, the bumble bee seemed fuller or more open? TO me. haha. It would shatter my world to do this with vintage tubes. or tube amp vs ….. or coke and pepsi….
I have a great pair of cans on, and I can't tell a difference. The re-amp sounds equally bad in all of them ;) I'm half-joking. It was a good demonstration that illustrates the irrelevancy of capacitor material from a tonal standpoint.
Horses for courses, my friend. We understand the limitations of our reamping methods in a scenario such as this, but it really is the best way to provide as close to a level playing field as possible. In doing do, as you mentioned, we've illustrated how similar they really are and why the choice of capacitor has to be a personal one, based on the individual tastes of the player. Cheers!
At this point "something" gave the results "someone" wanted but "I" digress.
If you would phase cancel the takes, we would only be hearing the difference between them...
I appreciate your videos, but you have it backwards according to electronics experts: Capacitors act as high-PASS filters, not low-pass filters. The greater the capacitor value, the lower the frequency below which (lows, mids) go to ground. Resistors act somewhat in reverse of that, though the best effect of putting a resistor in parallel with a capacitor is that it makes the cutoff frequency less sharp...more gradual. Hence, the concept behind "grease bucket" circuits, which not only use cap/resistor in the grounded line, but an additional resistor in the "hot" wire.
What tone pots do primarily is cut the resonant peak out more or less, which makes the lower tones appear to be boosted or cut...but, it's an illusion, deriving from the ratio of lows to highs.
As to whether the capacitor material makes a difference...many experts thing it is "in the mind" of people who claim to be able to tell the difference. But, vendors are happy to charge, for expensive caps, between 10 & 100 times the cost of cheap ones, for those who insist on being able to distinguish between them.
Ultimately, the best idea is to add a graphic equalizer pedal, an active control, which is more precise than passive controls, because active controls can both boost & cut frequency ranges...whereas passive controls can only cut them.
Thanks for watching and for your comment. I'm sorry for any confusion. The capacitor does, as you say, act as a high-pass filter. But, since the end result of a guitar's passive tone circuit is that everything passing through that capacitor goes to ground, the net outcome is a low pass filter effect. This is because the only thing that "passes" through to the amplifier is what is lower than the cutoff frequency.
Also, the tone circuit doesn't just cut the resonant peak, that would be more like a notch filter. With guitar tone circuits, the resonant frequency peak tends to move lower as you increase the amount of attenuation (turning the knob down), which sounds different in different circuits due to the combination of frequency and Q. The frequency of the resonant peak is determined by the cutoff frequency and the peak's level is inversely determined by the attenuation level. So, as the frequency dips lower into lower frequencies so too does the resonant peak. As the amplitude of the frequencies above the cutoff decreases, the level of the resonant peak actually increases. And the narrower the cutoff, the tighter and higher the peak. This is why some folks say that a .015 cap can sound somewhat like a wah effect when the tone control is rolled up and down because the peak shifts in frequency and amplitude.
Of course, this is all an oversimplification that doesn't include things like impedance, inductance, or any number of other related variables. But this is all originally only intended to make things clearer for the average guitarist, not necessarily aimed at electrical engineers and the like. I hope this clarifies things a bit for you and other viewers. Thanks again and take care.
wrong ,, I small amount of signal is sent through the cap even with control set on 10 .. to prove this just remove your cap completely
NEVER use a HX stomp to compare tone.
Too late.
Tune up🤷♀
The easiest way to debunk the "material matters" argument is simply to point out that capacitors weren't invented for guitars. They are used in millions of other electronic devices. If the material effected the output in any way, there would be millions of engineers talking about it and writing papers on the subject. That isn't happening. Believing material matters is just as insane as believing the earth is flat.
However, material DOES matter in other ways. Ceramic caps are garbage as far as consistency. Their capacitance changes over time and is effected by temperature. They are also microphonic, so a potential source of noise. Metallic film caps won't sound different, but they are vastly superior to ceramics in these other important areas.
Absolutely! But folks will still swear that they can hear the magic. And more power to 'em, if they think they can. They're free to use what they like and the rest of us will do the same, and we'll all be happier for it. Everybody wins.
But you've raised a very valid point here. Thanks for sharing.
if you can't hear a difference between a bumble and a green chiclet you're in the wrong biz
Good thing we're not in the capacitor bix.