Tone Icons

[Joe Kramer]

In some pro audio forums, just the mention of recapping a mixer or upgrading opamps brings forth maniacal hyper-debunkers screaming about how absolutely none of it matters and how anyone who thinks it does should be summarily pummeled to death.  Unfortunately, I've seen signs of that here too.  I understand it's fun to rant, and with all due respect and admiration to Jack Orman (no kidding), his rants about similar topics strike me as very divisive, exclusionary, and, frankly, kill-joyish.  I'm sure this is an unintentional side-effect and I repeat: I admire and respect Jack and his contributions, which is why his dictates sadden me the more.

While I have been insulted numerous times on forums, I think this is the first time I have been called a killjoy....  hahahaha...  1) I may express an opinion on a forum but I never rant; I reserve that for my own website where I pay for the bandwidth, and even then most readers will realize that my comments have a bit of tongue-in-cheek attitude. 2) If my comments seem divisive or exclusionary, then it is in your own mind.

Dear Jack,

No insult intended!  I sincerely hope your "hahaha" indicates you don't really feel insulted--these things are hard to decipher in text, without the aid of facial expression, tone of voice, etc.  The idea of insulting anyone on this forum is absolutely counter to my whole point: the world is full of enough conflicts, camps, and factions that we don't need them here.

Just to try and clarify why I cited you, here's one comment from your rant pages:

"There is no reason to replace electrolytic capacitors in effects boxes. Repeat after me... capacitor upgrades do not make any audible difference in stompboxes."

Audible to whom?  Audible to Jack Orman, of course.   And who is Jack Orman?  Well, like RG, he's a guy whose words carry a lot of weight in stompbox circles, and rightfully so.   Well, if it's audible to Jack, who's got a good deal of authority, maybe I better just take his word for it, since I'm a newbie.  I'll throw my hat in with the Jack-Orman-don't-upgrade-electrolytics camp, as opposed to the folks in the other camp, who are probably wrong.

Do you begin to see the irony here?  Given enough time and impetus, the Jack-Orman-don't-upgrade-electrolytics camp can become as much a "tone icon" as NOS or CC or germanium!

I realize you qualify this comment on your site as both editorial and as rant.  But because you are Jack Orman your comments, tongue-in-cheek or not, are likely to be taken quite seriously by beginners, and so I think you really can't qualify them too much.  That is, unless you overemphasis by saying something like "I don't  hear any difference but then again you might," I guess I just don't see how anyone benefits from statements like these.

Sure there are Laws within electronics.  But what we do here is not merely electronics, but audio and musical electronics.  In light of that, the only extra-electronic Law that applies is: if it sounds good (to you), it is good.  With that Law firmly at the center of your being, it won't matter how much Mojo or Anti-Mojo is slathered on, nor how humble or high-quality the components in your latest DIY creation are, you'll be on solid ground electronically, sonically, and musically.

Again, no ill-will intended Jack, and I apologize if you were offended by my using you as an example.

With A Friendly Handshake,
Joe

PS: On the Objective-vs-Subjective debate, contemplate this Zen-like question: What is the dividing line between day and night?

[analogmike]

"There is no reason to replace electrolytic capacitors in effects boxes. Repeat after me... capacitor upgrades do not make any audible difference in stompboxes."

Audible to whom?  Audible to Jack Orman, of course.   And who is Jack Orman?  Well, like RG, he's a guy whose words carry a lot of weight in stompbox circles, and rightfully so.   Well, if it's audible to Jack, who's got a good deal of authority, maybe I better just take his word for it, since I'm a newbie.  I'll throw my hat in with the Jack-Orman-don't-upgrade-electrolytics camp, as opposed to the folks in the other camp, who are probably wrong.

Do you begin to see the irony here?  Given enough time and impetus, the Jack-Orman-don't-upgrade-electrolytics camp can become as much a "tone icon" as NOS or CC or germanium!

We have a winner here! Where do we send the Kewpie doll? 

I have mentioned it before on this forum, but I can easily hear the difference between different MODELS of the same brand (Xicon) and ratings (1uF 20V) of electrolytic caps in my chorus pedals. Obviously there is even more difference when you compare to other types of capacitors. Inductance is different in different capacitors of the same ratings, and that CAN make a huge difference in tone, like moving a wah pedal a few degrees changes your tone, a capacitor in some parts of a circuit CAN do the same thing.

Try various caps using a blind double loop box, and have fun!

[puretube]

high time to put a link to the bin/drawer...

[puretube]

PS: On the Objective-vs-Subjective debate, contemplate this Zen-like question: What is the dividing line between day and night?

>...the darkest hour is before dawn<

is what Mama Cass sung me...

[RDV]

Hey guys!

I bought some TALENT today!

Not.

I'd like to clarify(if that's possible). The whole voodoo mojo BS that the majority of the musical instrument retail business is built on implies that if you buy this you'll sound like this. These guys plunk down that hard earned pay, next thing you know there's a new pedal on eBay.

Sorry, it doesn't work. Only a poor carpenter blames his tools.

RDV

[markr04]

(***For non North American readers:  It was customary earlier in the 20th century for games of skill and accuracy in carnivals/fairs to give prizes to those who could knock down something, shoot a target, throw a hoop over something, etc.  Often, because these games involved skills where men could show off to women, the prize or choice of prizes would be masculine, like a cigar. I suppose that was also easy for travelling carnivals to carry around too.  The expression "close, but no cigar" came to mean an action that was almost successful but not quite good enough.)

OT:
Another version from the History Channel a couple of months ago: The jackpot on early slot machines was cigars. The cigar came from the storekeeper, who would say when the jackpot was close (but not quite attained): "Close, but no cigar."

[RaceDriver205]

Do you begin to see the irony here?  Given enough time and impetus, the Jack-Orman-don't-upgrade-electrolytics camp can become as much a "tone icon" as NOS or CC or germanium!

Yes, but the difference is that Jack Orman is not selling anything. He is an experienced electronics hobbyist (and most importantly, he has designed his own pedals) and thus we can assume he knows what he is talking about.
However, these 'tone icons' are quoted when something is being sold. The people selling them are not interested whether the things they say are true, they are using them as a "means to an end".

The funniest thing I have noticed is that all pedals being sold online say something along the lines of "this is the greatest pedal that was ever made ever, it is so incredibly good that the moment you here it play your mind will explode with awe" - every single one exactly the same. I made sure my mate knew this when he informed me "Im getting a POD, coz its the best effect box you can currently buy". (He later is believed to have said "Well... its OK")

[davebungo]

How about this tone icon:
"soldered with real lead solder"

it won't be long (if not already) before it becomes a major tone icon, although no-one will be able to claim this and sell any pedals.

[Processaurus]

Music equipment and hi-fi marketing is often similar to "The Emperor's New Clothes". 

The Rockstar's New Stompbox

with apologies...   

-Jack

Hopefully one day I'll be blessed with children that hear a pedal I'm modding and exclaim, "but there is no change in the tone!"

[amz-fx]

"Prouver que j'ai raison serait accorder que je puis avoir tort." - Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, Le Mariage de Figaro (Proving that I am right would be admitting that I could be wrong.) 

IF anyone thinks that my opinion carries more weight than the average bozo, then you are spending entirely too much time on this forum. I assure you that in other parts of the stompbox internet world, the mojo-epistles of any local boutique guru are weighed with greater reverence than my more scientifically oriented "rants".

I bought a couple of boutique pedals from a builder who is very highly regarded on another forum...  praised by many for his "ear for great tone". One of the pedals that had been lauded for being so fat and rich sounding, was actually quite thin and nasal through my system. I tried numerous amps and guitars with the same result. I did some tests on the pedal and they confirmed what my ears had heard. So I opened it up, chipped off the special mojo epoxy and traced the circuit... which further confirmed what I had heard and measured. Yet forumites continued with their praise: "What a marvellous tone! And the fidelity! The sustain of that beautiful tone! I have never heard anything like it in my life!"  It's all subjective, isn't it?

One of my favorite magazines is Stereophile, because I love looking at the reviews of equipment that I will never buy, even if I could afford them. The staff of the magazine go to great lengths to downplay the fact that many of the extremely expensive tweaks, accessories and components that are advertised in their magazine have absolutely no audible effect on the sound of music. They even contrive a convoluted logic that blind listening tests are somehow flawed because the test itself is "an interfering variable". Huh?

John Atkinson, Editor of Stereophile, wrote in a feature article: "But when you have taken part in a number of these blind tests and experienced how two amplifiers you know from personal experience to sound extremely different can still fail to be identified under blind conditions, then perhaps an alternative hypothesis is called for: that the very procedure of a blind listening test can conceal small but real subjective differences."

I suggest (after I stop laughing) that the alternate hypothesis is horsepuckey. The blind listening tests are not at fault but instead the amplifiers that you "you know from personal experience to sound extremely different", are in fact so similar that you cannot tell them apart unless you are looking at them and allowing your mind to have a subconscious influence on your auditory decisions.

This type of audiofoolery is similar to the arguments for homeopathy and alternative medicines, which is "I have seen it work, so the process is valid".  Bloodletting made lots of people feel better in the 1700s but it killed George Washington! 

I had a good friend who developed cancer. She suffered through chemotherapy and went into remission but the treatment was difficult and sapped much of her strength and determination. After a couple of years, the cancer came back. She so dreaded the chemo treatments that she turned to alternative treatments and rejected the medical procedures that had had proven results. She died less than a year later in one of the quack clinics across the border in Mexico.

Penn & Teller had a program on Showtime where they did taste tests in a fancy rstaurant comparing expensive bottled water. The customers  claimed to be able to tell the difference in the waters and explained the subtle variations in the taste...  EXCEPT, all of the bottles actually contained ordinary tap water. Just say No to H2O. The name of their program explains it all...  http://www.sho.com/site/ptbs/topics.do?topic=bw

But I digress...

Why do people buy (or make) expensive mods to pedals?

1. They are exclusionary. I have something out of the ordinary and you don't.
2. The mods look cool. Big fat 630v caps in a stompbox look really neat. They look good so they must sound good.
3. Crowd mentality. This psychological phenonmenon supresses a person's willingness to think for himself and increases suggestibility. (Cue Mark Hammer)
4. Peer pressure. People are unlikely to break from the group-think unless they have a strong ally or some other compelling reason.

I made a custom pedal for a player in Australia not long ago...  it had NOS germanium transistors and stacked metal-film box capacitors... but  it was an original design that required the use of those components.

Why is the subject of subjective listening tests vs. lab measurements such a hot topic? Voodoo, hoodoo, mojo, you know.  Kill the sacred cows.

ZVex uses ceramic and tantalum capacitors in his pedals but you never seen any "hi-fi" mods offered for them. Why is that?  I have my theory.

Best regards, Jack

ps: If you want to recap a vintage pro-audio mixer I will certainly agree that the cap upgrades will be audible...  but changing out electrolytic capacitors in a new stompbox will have no effect on the sound. The bandwidth is too restricted, there are too many other non-linearities with greater influence on the sound, and normal component variations will nullify the impossibly small differences in the signal from one pedal to another.

pps: I'm hoping Walters will weigh in here with his unique viewpoint and take the spotlight off me and R.G.

ppps: Absolute truths: Steely Dan is not one guy. You get fringe benefits, not French benefits. It's not the Leaning Tower of Pizza. James Dean was an actor; Jimmy Dean makes sausages. Changing out electrolytic capacitors in a new stompbox will have no effect on the sound.

References:

An Audiophile Sounds Off
Penn & Teller 
The Paradox of Choice : Why More Is Less 
http://www.johnedward.net/index2.htm or http://www.sho.com/site/ptbs/topics.do?topic=tttd
Homeopathy

[Joe Kramer]

. . . changing out electrolytic capacitors in a new stompbox will have no effect on the sound.

Changing out which electrolytic caps with which replacement caps?  Which stompbox?  Who's ears will be judging the effect or lack of effect on the sound?

[hairyandy]

I just looked up the word "stud" at dictionary.com and it gave me a picture of Jack Orman and a link to muzique.com.   

I'm soooooooo happy that I found a place to hang where not only are people so accomodating and knowledgeable, but they have the nuts to cite references to their posts on a forum!



Now let's all finish a build, do a keg-stand and go streaking through the quad...I LOVE this place!

[formerMember1]

but changing out electrolytic capacitors in a new stompbox will have no effect on the sound

I tried 3 different brand electros, all the same value and measured and they were/are all different.   Recorded it too.... 

[TELEFUNKON]

I put (unbranded) tantalums before and after 78XX`s voltage regulators.
(sometimes 79XX`s).

[george]

but changing out electrolytic capacitors in a new stompbox will have no effect on the sound

I tried 3 different brand electros, all the same value and measured and they were/are all different.   Recorded it too.... 

Hi formerMember1

is there something of this that all of us can take away with us and use?

Sure they sounded different but what sounded better? worse? 

Did you try 2 electros of the same brand AND value? did they sound the same?

And can you please PM me with the brand so I can buy mine before everybody else?

Seriously though Jack's point IS valid, esp when Keeley advertises "Hi-Fi" mods knowing that the bandwidth of guitar equipment is NOT hi-fi (and noone wants it to be ...)

[RaceDriver205]

Just say No to H2O

lol, reminds me of a mock campaine someone held, asking or people to ban "Dihydrogen Monoxide".

Check it out: http://www.wilk4.com/humor/humore8.htm

The Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division: http://www.dhmo.org/

[davebungo]

BTW the "real" reason for re-capping mixing desks especially the likes of Neve, Calrec, SSL, AMS or whatever is very simple.  These desks are expensive and they are expected to work very long hours, perhaps at elevated temperatures.  Now, if there are 2 things which electrolytics do not like it is a) time (while powered up) and b) temperature.  Life expectancy is dramatically reduced as temperature increases. 

Neve had a big problem with some of their desks which had the channel cards designed in such a way that the heat generated by active components flowed vertically into a group of electrolytic caps.  This was a simple and very expensive mistake.  Also to reduce noise levels, circuitry in desks like these is often designed with low values of resistors to keep the thermal noise to a minimum but this has the side effect of increasing power consumption and heat.

So is it worth re-capping an old expensive desk or is it more cost efficient to buy a new one?  I don't know but this is the real and practical reason.  Nothing to do with sound apart from the degradation caused by the old worn out capacitors.  Recording and broadcast engineers don't spend all of their spare time arguing about which caps sound best.

This should not be confused with re-capping a pedal for effect, of course.  A different subject entirely.

[amz-fx]

Seriously though Jack's point IS valid, esp when Keeley advertises "Hi-Fi" mods knowing that the bandwidth of guitar equipment is NOT hi-fi (and noone wants it to be ...)

This an excellent example...  Robert Keeley and I are actually good friends.  He knows my position on certain types of cap mods and I know his business reasons for offering them.  Neither gets in the way of our mutual respect or friendship. I actually gave him some of the recent mods to his compressor...  and we have some other projects in the works.

Now let's all finish a build, do a keg-stand and go streaking through the quad...I LOVE this place!

There once was a man named Jack
Whose mojo had all gone flat
So with a wink and a nod
He wired up some mods
Using hair that grew on his back.

Well, the daily hour of internet access that they allow us here at the asylum is up, and besides, Spongebob is coming on TV and I never miss him.

Later, Jack

References:

Point-to-point Pedal
Metal film vs. Carbon Comp

[Mark Hammer]

Wittgenstein noted that "the description of the thing is not the thing itself".

We can extrapolate this principal to infer that what gets repeated in promotional literature and websites for the purposes of marketing a product or service, and what gets remembered and relayed on user forums, is not necessarily how something actually works, or necessarily evidence of a meaningful different or impact.

Davebungo's post is delightfully illustrative of the other principal that one must always always always take context into account.  What is meaningful and added value in one context can be moot or even counterproductive in another.  As I am pathologically fond of repeating, what adds value for wide-bandwidth multi-source audio processing (i.e., many musicians and tracks, mixed down to a few, through a set of speakers expected to cover everything from the biggest kickdrum and thickest bass strings to the swish of brushes on teeny cymbals or bows on violin strings) can have absolutely no useful value or impact whatsoever, when it comes to playing ONE INSTRUMENT through a long cable into its own dedicated amp and speakers whose bandwidth is deliberately limited.  There is also the compromise situation wherein a single instrument is played through pedals directly into a board, bypassing the amp and speakers.  I have no doubts that there are some things that make THAT scenario sound better but have no impact on amped sound.

Jack, Give my regards to Patrick.  He may be slow but he's pink and pointy!!

[analogmike]

Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy are my heroes.