the TRUTH about "guitar tone caps"

[pinkjimiphoton]

conclusive and empirical evidence trumps the "golden ear".

enjoy.

http://zerocapcable.com/?page_id=224

http://zerocapcable.com/?page_id=224

long, well done posting about tone caps, with examples, sound samples, and screen shots proving the truth....

like i said... a cap is a cap in this case.... when you see just how close the response is between them all,
you may be surprised

[idy]

Their main product seems to be a line of battery powered cables... that do not buffer or amplify... they don't say what it does do except give you very low capacitance.

Its got a battery, but you can use it to power a light bulb because its a "direct connection."

http://zerocapcable.com/?page_id=231

[pinkjimiphoton]

didn't check out anything other than the article

[soggybag]

I saw another demo a few years back where they had recorded sine wave sweeping from low to high frequency played through a range of different capacitor types. An audio histogram showing the frequency response showed no meaningful difference between any type of cap.

[anotherjim]

All the crowing Gibson make about their traditional use of Orange Drops. If you open a '70s Gibo you find ceramics. If you open a cheap Japanese plywood copy from the same period, you find green film caps.

[digi2t]

I find blue caps sound the best. Green are too bright, and red too dark. Blue. That's the ticket. That's why all my guitars are loaded with old Philips blue axials.

That's my 2 bits, and I'm sticking to it.

[EBK]

I have orange caps in my guitars because they look tastiest.  I wouldn't want to eat a green cap or a ceramic cap.

More seriously, I have orange caps in my guitar because some people say they're great, and they weren't expensive.  My ears don't distinguish good from great.  It's a blessing, really.

[iainpunk]

i love how savoury the mustard coloured late 40's caps in my collection look, like a perfect snack, if it weren't for the leads sticking out.

i also love the look of tropical fish caps. i have a whole bunch of those too.

im also kind of in love with those weird tubular hollow capacitors.


i know confirmation bias is a real thing, so i'd rather be in blissful ignorance and have better tone through a cool looking part. 

cheers

[EBK]

im also kind of in love with those weird tubular hollow capacitors.

Those are ceramic tube wirewound resistors, not caps, I believe.

[stallik]

I made some vinyl stickers some years back. Wrapped around any old cap, they improve the tone substantially.

Honest!

[iainpunk]

im also kind of in love with those weird tubular hollow capacitors.

Those are ceramic tube wirewound resistors, not caps, I believe.

oops, i just absentmindedly plucked the first result from google, as i didn't know the name, but the caps i have look really similar, maybe a bit less shiny. like these


cheers

[amptramp]

You came to nearly the same conclusion Steve Bench came to a while ago:

http://diyaudioprojects.com/mirror/members.aol.com/sbench102/caps.html

Rather than frequency response, he plots the applied voltage at the input of a coupling cap to the voltage at the output on an X-Y scale.  Only ceramic caps showed a deviation from linear due to some of the energy going into a piezoelectric bending mode like a crystal headphone speaker.  Since these caps also act like a microphone (as the article says), they have no business in an amp used for music.

The Steve Bench article goes into the hysteresis effect of dielectric molecules changing position with applied voltage and mica and polyester shows some hysteresis.  It should be noted that the zerocapable article linked in this thread does not test for this effect.  Paper in oil is shown as the best, polycarbonate is almost as good and polypropylene and polycarbonate are intermediate between PIO and polyester.  Some capacitors show a change in capacitance with frequency which is slight in most cases but still there.

There is also no mention of dielectric absorption, the effect of charging a capacitor and turning it into an electret, the electrostatic equivalent of a permanent magnet.  You can charge up a capacitor, short the terminals, release the short and measure a voltage across the terminals.  The zerocapable article does not test for that, either, because tone caps in a guitar have a zero average DC voltage applied across them.

In electrolytic capacitors, they found tantalum slug caps to be much more non-linear than aluminum electrolytic caps.  The zerocapable article does not test electrolytics but going by frequency response, it would not pick up any distinction.

[Phoenix]

Their main product seems to be a line of battery powered cables... that do not buffer or amplify... they don't say what it does do except give you very low capacitance.

Its got a battery, but you can use it to power a light bulb because its a "direct connection."

http://zerocapcable.com/?page_id=231

Their claims are actually quite possible, whether it actually delivers or how well it performs I have no idea, but the technique is used in high frequency and low current applications regularly.

All that's needed is a triaxial cable and a buffer - the buffer is not inline, but buffers the signal to drive the "guard"/inner shield. Because there is no voltage difference between the inner conductor and the guard, it eliminates the capacitance that you'd normally see between inner signal conductor and outer grounded shield.
The guard buffer would presumably be ≥10Meg, an order of magnitude more than the traditional 1Meg input impedance of guitar amps so that it ends up an insignificant extra load - it's in parallel, not inline. But the cable capacitance has a larger effect on the resonant peak of a passive pickup than the resistive load of an amp anyway.

So yep, you can get a (near) "zero capacitance cable", of any reasonable length, but triax is expensive, and yes it will need a battery.
The lightbulb demonstation pic is pretty dumb though, agreed.

See Wikipedia for further reading on triax and driven guards.

[ElectricDruid]

Thanks for the explanation there, Phoenix.

That was one of those things where my "woo detector" was definitely going off, but it looks like this time it was a false alarm! Nice when that happens and there's a sound basis to the claims.

[pinkjimiphoton]

all i know is years ago, i took some roach clips on wire and a shit load of different kinds of caps. tested 'em all on my meter to make sure they were about 10% of each other in value.
tried 'em all. none made an iota of toneful difference to me, and i'm generally a freak with dog ears.
to me, the simple ceramics sounded the best.
the only diff i noticed was really old, shitty wax caps with serious leakage made the guitar sound a bit warmer, cuz they seemed to bleed off more high end even with the pot on 10. it was by no means an "improvement" like so many people seem to think.
i remember a page online years ago where they cracked open some stupid expensive high end "hand made" cap and it was literally a cheap ass electro inside a crayon for all intents.
like most mojo, its all hogwash.
jmo, ymmv

[Gus]

I disagree to an extent, let me explain

The microphonics added with class 2 and 3 ceramics can work for and against
I had a meter to check the values to control that part
An example I once worked on a 70s strat for someone it had a large disk 1KV tone cap we tried different tone caps and the stock? disk sounded the best
BUT
It only mattered when playing at stage level with the disk bent to touch the inside of the control cavity with feedback at the "edge" or feeding back. It was was minor and and you had to listen so it did not matter that much.

FWIW I also think microphonics are part of the tube sound

[pinkjimiphoton]

hahahah NOTHING matters if its not stage level in the end bro

[Ripthorn]

I've just taken to not putting tone controls in many of my more recent guitar builds. I build 2 or 3 a year and find I don't really use the tone control at all unless it's something like a telecaster.

[pinkjimiphoton]

I've just taken to not putting tone controls in many of my more recent guitar builds. I build 2 or 3 a year and find I don't really use the tone control at all unless it's something like a telecaster.

man, you need to try hi and lo pass filters on a guitar. makes a ridiculous difference, particularly with distortion

[bluebunny]

I made some vinyl stickers some years back. Wrapped around any old cap, they improve the tone substantially.

Honest!

Hmmm...  I would say hey improve he one subsanially.