Quality of components in guitars, pedals (caps/resistors)

I have some general questions here...

Can anyone explain in simple terms why some capacitors are considered to be better than others, in terms of sounds quality in a pedal or guitar?

In some of the pedal mods I've read about (and accomplished), replacing the "cheap" silver caps for some "better" poly film caps makes the pedal sound better. What's the story?

And what is so special about Sprague Orange Drop capacitors?

I plan to do some pickup upgrades to my MIM Strat and I'm wondering if I should swap out that .022 poly film cap... for a Sprague cap. What kind of effect would it have?

Are some resistors of cheaper quality than others? I don't see much written on this.

If there are any other types of components of varying quality (op amps, ic's, diodes) worth mentioning here, feel free.

I'm curious about this as well. There are so many people out there talking about how great part X sounds compared to part Y, and I think they like to say it's mojo when it's probably something very simple... less noise, different response along the range of audible frequencies, etc.

http://www.diystompboxes.com/pedals/schematics.html

go there and at the bottom of the page under "cool article links" there should be a link or 2 that explains it i think - i haven't checked the page's so im not sure if they work.

hope its some help to you

whoa! That page is the Super Wal-Mart of DIY links. I'll begin sifting through it, while I get my haircut, get an oil change, and buy shotgun shells.

i can tell you from first hand experience theres no such thing as "BETTER"

someties the cheapest or most unreliable part sounds best, take tubes for example!

Ceramic caps are pretty {censored}ty in general but in certain postitions in certain circuits they sound amazing,as does any other cap.

So what it comes down to is that you do need to know what you're doing to make any call on what cap to use for any specific application because other than that you are just using them on hearsay and have no idea what any of the many alternatives are.

orange drops are high quality caps yes, but that doesnt mean they will sound good in anything you put them in. as for caps in guitars,well it makes no audible difference what cap you use. people who spend 40 quid on a cap believe it does but it doesn't.

once a guitar is wired a specific way theres not too much you can do to change its sound. you can give it a wider range of tone but it will still sound the same.change the pups do of course.

a ceramic, orange drop,mylar or any other cap on the tone is less significant than the value used.

you said you have .022uF on there?

well if you use a .033uf you will hav a wider range of tone but it will be the same sound.

use.047uf and it gets even wider (darker as you reduce the tone knob)

I've used orange drops,expensive NOS caps of various types,ceramics,cheap chinese ones you name it and they all sound much the same, not worth worrying about man.if you want new sounds buy an EQ pedal as youl be happy with that but when you have 100 dollars worth of caps that all sound the same youl be disappointed.

theres a lot more to electronics than people think!

Thanks a lot Ned!

I wasn't really aiming for new sounds so much as clarification for these components in the supposed hierarchy.

I've got an EQ pedal already.

I mean i'm not saying 100% you wont hear a difference, what i mean is that IF you do its not gonna be very much and you'd probably have to use a stethoscope to hear the difference its that minor.

check out SD schems. theres a lot of nice ways to wire guitars and Seymour's site has a good bunch of layouts.

http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wiring-diagrams/

on guitars i use whatever caps i got but if i have a choice i'll use ceramics for one simple reason, i like the look of 'em.

ah, i see you got a 70's smallstone?!?! me too, nice phase hey!

The guys on reranch made a cap testing jig for guitar tone caps. They found that only the ceramic disk caps didn't sound so good for a guitar tone cap. They found that the difference in all the other caps was mostly too small to notice.

Max

Interesting, because I see ceramic caps on tone pots often. Cheaper guitars mind you, but still. How much $$ is being saved by these guitar makers in using a ceramic cap over a film cap?

look at 1960's fender guitars, what do ya find? ceramic caps.

my mustang has one,i seen teles,strats jaguars,jazzmasters with em and theyre not exactly cheap guitars.

anyways,most squiers use film caps similar to fender japan.caps are caps are caps......a waste of money imo.

most caps are made in china in the same factory regardless of the labell as well.

oh,and to your question. when you can buy in bulk the difference is nonexistant because i buy ceramics,films yadayadayada for around the same price already.

In my opinion, what the cap is made of has very little to do with the "tone" of the circuit.

What you will find though, is that Poly caps are more temperature stable, meaning their value will change less over a given temperature range. That is why you often find those kind of caps in circuits like a VFO (Variable Frequency Oscillator) in a radio - you don't want your radio frequency to drift as the circuit warms and cools.

Inside a guitar, I would be very surprised to find that caps of the same capacitance will sound different.

Also, different caps (like resistors) have different tolerances on their actual value. What you may find is that one cap is closer to the specified value then another.

Also, I've posted this link before but it's worth doing it again:

http://www.wulfden.org/NVQS/NA5N_Capacitor.pdf

it is very helpful for id'ing caps.

i can tell you from first hand experience theres no such thing as "BETTER" someties the cheapest or most unreliable part sounds best, take tubes for example! Ceramic caps are pretty {censored}ty in general but in certain postitions in certain circuits they sound amazing,as does any other cap. So what it comes down to is that you do need to know what you're doing to make any call on what cap to use for any specific application because other than that you are just using them on hearsay and have no idea what any of the many alternatives are. orange drops are high quality caps yes, but that doesnt mean they will sound good in anything you put them in. as for caps in guitars,well it makes no audible difference what cap you use. people who spend 40 quid on a cap believe it does but it doesn't. once a guitar is wired a specific way theres not too much you can do to change its sound. you can give it a wider range of tone but it will still sound the same.change the pups do of course. a ceramic, orange drop,mylar or any other cap on the tone is less significant than the value used. you said you have .022uF on there? well if you use a .033uf you will hav a wider range of tone but it will be the same sound. use.047uf and it gets even wider (darker as you reduce the tone knob) I've used orange drops,expensive NOS caps of various types,ceramics,cheap chinese ones you name it and they all sound much the same, not worth worrying about man.if you want new sounds buy an EQ pedal as youl be happy with that but when you have 100 dollars worth of caps that all sound the same youl be disappointed. theres a lot more to electronics than people think!

And less! There's no magic involved. There's resistance, capacitance, and inductance, and that's about it, as far as passive components go. Noise can enter in as well, but it's usually insignificant. So, if an Orange Drop of the same nominal value sounds the same, then it's because it isn't really the same. Maybe it's closer to the nominal value (caps tend to be low), or it has less effective series resistance (ESR). Self-inductance isn't usually a problem unless the caps are electrolytic.

No magic? what a shame!

i forgot to mention as is already mentioned "tolerance" would play more of a role in sound differences than the actual cap choice, especially with +/-20% or so.

people just need to wire their guitars, play and enjoy and let all the audiophile morons worry about booteek caps cause they aren't worth the money!

pretty simple really but if people want new sounds then the best advice i can give is look into a new guitar,pedal or amp.

the guitars wood and routes in it play more of a role in sound than any electrics we put in them.

an example, i have a alder jaguar and until last week it had single coils in it, SD QP's around 14k and i got sick of the interferance, not 60 cycle but just buzz and {censored} like that.

And besides that i like humbuckers so i routed it for humbuckers, put 'em in and played away, to no surprise it still sounds like a jaguar but its a little warmer now, not cause of the pickups but because of the routing, bigger route = warmer sound is what ive noticed.

so you can only get so far with electrics in a guitar until you really just need a different guitar.

btw,my jag actually gets played flat out now and NO, not teh kurts!

The guy who built my tele (which is solid maple and heavy, just like I asked for) told me that 99% of the sound of an electric guitar is the pickups and tone circuit.

My tele has a SD hot rails in the bridge (which sounds fantastic, btw).

I put an identical pup in the bridge of my MIM tele, obviously not made out of solid maple and quite a bit lighter.

It sounds similar. Not the SAME, but pretty darn close.

the guys at fender would beg to differ because its the wood,shape,routes and finally the electrics.

if what your guy said is true then we could turn jazzmasters in to Bc rich warlocks with just electrics and it would sound indistinguishable (99%)

this is just ridiculous and isn't true!

the reason your teles sound similar is cause they are both teles, prety obvious really.

i dunno why this guys telling you this because its incorrect...email fender and ask, or better yet theres a fender doco on utube about it if ya search.

it makes no difference, you have guitars ya like but dont believe everything "techs" and luthiers tell ya cause some of them are straight up full of {censored}!