thebattleofmidway? The Wah Guy? A question about caps? Transistors?

[boogietube]

I picked up about 50 .01uf tropical fish caps for about $10 at a surplus store- what a find! Anyway, you seem to build a lot of wah boards so I wondered -are these just some hyped mojo thing or do they really sound better? I know that the inductor makes a hell of a difference but caps? Also I scored some BC109'S cheap (10 cents ea)- so- same question-mojo or no?

[R.G.]

Sigh.

It's a hype/mojo thing. The "tropical fish" cap decoration was just a way to put the component values on caps with color code. They are just mylar caps under the coat of many colors.

Ditto BC109s. Transistor gain does change things, but there is no magic to the BC109.

[boogietube]

Well at least I picked them up super cheap! There's a place on the net selling the caps for $10 EACH!! . This is why I was fooled I guess.

[R.G.]

I'm glad you didn't get taken. It's no wonder that people love to talk up mojo parts if you can turn a box of $0.15 caps into $10.00 bills.

[lacto]

Sorry R.G. I have to disagree that tropical fish caps are identical to mylar, compare them and you will find Mylar are far duller and mute the highs more than the fish caps. In a wah pedal, fish caps are only good for the .22uf positions, they are terrible for the input or Q caps. The battle of midway has used them in wah boards and all I can say is anyone who REALLY knows about wah pedals would never put them in those positions, terrible choice. You could use the .01uf caps you bought in some other pedals that require a metallicized polyester film type cap of that value, but forget them in a wah pedal. BC109b's are a good choice for a vintage sounding, Clyde type wah, but all are not equal. Some of them have a nice clarity and others are muddy sounding and of course the values make a big difference. These are my opinions based on extensive and costly experimentation.

[jonathan perez]

well, i agree with both these gentlemen. 

good price, but i prefer .01 fishys in fuzz pedals. not that it makes a big sonic difference, but they look cool.

whats most important in bc109s is definitely the amount of gain were talkin...you can use any transistors with the gain in the same range. bc109s just make for a better sale...BUT! i have to say, i like them in my vintage styled wahs.

WE diy-ers know that .01 fish caps arent the best, but some may find that they sound good...those are the ones we sell wahs to. 

cap material does make a difference, but only the sweep caps. i wouldnt suggest WIMA caps by ANY means, unless used for .22, otherwise any polypro/mylar caps will do.

otherwise, its a good find and i think you may enjoy them. expect a PM, id like to have a pair or two in some wahs i plan on keeping. 

[boogietube]

The battle of midway has used them in wah boards and all I can say is anyone who REALLY knows about wah pedals would never put them in those positions, terrible choice

I think that he just uses .22 by the pics in the  pictures thread. I think that he's using poly film (old school) in the q positions by the look of it.
So - I have gain ranges from 288 to 430 with the 109's - I'm going to try 390 and 400 from what I've read - any opinions?

[R.G.]

No problem. Your opinions are your own, and I'm a strong advocate of each person using his own ears to find what he likes best. I would be the last person to tell you what what you hear is wrong.

But what I'm about to tell you will not make you happy.

Tropical fish caps are in fact metalized mylar caps inside. I find this not only by reading but by comparing (crudely; I don't have a laboratory to run chemical tests) them by destroying samples.

Furthermore, all capacitors are just after all components, albeit imperfect ones. And we can measure the caps and their imperfections.

In particular, we can measure the equivalent series resistance, equivalent series inductance, bulk capacitance, dielectric absorption, parallel leakage resistance, self resonant frequencies, and so on ad nauseum. What you find if you do that is that there is no measurable difference in tropical fish caps and "modern" mylar caps within the audio range. To frequencies well above audio, a tropical fish acts just like a modern mylar cap. I put "modern" in quotes because I did this experimentation back in the 90's when I had access at work to a lab with equipment that could measure the RF impedance of a gnat's eyelash. There are differences from brand to brand, and also differences in the same brand in values to some degree. But the tropical fish caps I measured were well within the specs for the modern ones, excepting that they had a higher variance of cap value from one to the next. That makes sense as modern production equipment is more tightly controlled than it was back in the day.

all I can say is anyone who REALLY knows about wah pedals would never put them in those positions, terrible choice.

All I can say is that in my opinion, there is a strong tendency in the human mind to want to have something be magic. It can be old components, old materials, old ways of doing things, whatever. There is a human urge for magic to exist. We'll take it anywhere we can get it. It seems to be most attractive if the magic parts, materials, procedures, etc. are hard to find or obtain. This is one motivation behind the hifi tweeko mentality, where people claim to be able to hear differences of less than a percent of the oxygen content of the copper wire that an audio signal is passing through.  They claim that solid teflon circuit boards and solid silver wire makes for "an inner clarity, a distinction between notes so that each note is clearly defined from the rest, yet not strident, not piercingly sharp edged, but in a way that opens up the sound stage and makes it three-dimensional, that moves the performer into the room... ". You see the direction here, yes?

It's a very powerful argument to say that one hears subtlties that others cannot hear, because it is impossible to prove a negative. No one can prove that you, for instance, do not actually and truly hear tropical fish caps as less dulling than mylar. However, when issues like this come up, the double blind test has proven very effective. If one person claims to hear something different about one whatever than another, a properly set up double blind test can distinguish whether the person can actually detect at a rate better than mere guessing whether one setup is different from another. As you might guess, there is a longish history of double blind ABX tests as they are called in the audio field. What these tests have shown in general is that the subjectivists (that's the "I can hear it, why can't you?" people) in general do at best what you'd expect from blind guessing, and sometimes they actually select the non-special parts test as the good one. That's really embarassing when it happens to a subjectivist.

So subjectivists attack double blind tests with a vengeance, as you can imagine. There is an entire literature of why double blind tests cannot be right.

I personally have a lot invested in the objectivist view of the world. That is, if it exists in the real world, you can come up with some way to measure it, however imperfectly, even if only statistically.  Humans being what they are - emotional, wanting to believe in magic, wanting to be distinguished as better in some way, and able to find patterns where there are none, absolutely will find differences in any two classes of things. In fact, psychologists have to go to ridiculous lengths to separate out these effects and get honest, objective readings of what humans really do or think.

So to me, if there is a difference, I will be able to postulate at least some way it might be measured. I can tell you that I have measured tropical fish versus generic mylar caps, and there is no difference there that is not accounted for by the capacitance and its imperfections. To the degree that it can be measured, tropical fish caps act just like the theoretical projections say they do.

That does not mean that that you do not hear them as better. In particular,

These are my opinions based on extensive and costly  experimentation.

... the more extensive and costly the experimentation, the more likely they are to sound better, given what humans are.

So you may well hear them that way.

But I would bet a substantial amount of money on other people not being able to tell the diffference in a well constructed test.

And I for sure would not. My old ears are going to pot from going to loud, crazy rock concerts in my youth. 

[boogietube]

Thanks R.G. !
I'll a/b them with sockets. I probably won't be able to tell the difference having owned Marshall amps for 20 years- and playing Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden through them.
You know I probably won't even bother. I remember a certain audiophile friend of mine "auditioning" new cables and interconnects. He brought home a dozen pairs of these and proceeded to look for synergy and some other crap - I thought that his high end system was incredible - I did not discern one difference between the stock cables he already had and the combination that he arrived at. Still sounded like the jazz musicians recorded "direct to disc" were sitting in the living room to me! -
Thanks for the info R.G.

[lacto]

I'm not offended or unhappy with what you said R.G. because I have read plenty of your writings and I know where you are coming from and you are always very consistent. Although I am obviously aware of the power of suggestion etc, but I really don't think that played into the conclusions my friend and I came up with.  We experimented with all aspects of wah pedals, bought every type cap and resistor, different values, inductors etc. An over simplified description of our methodology was that the other person would solder in various different types of components and I would write down my sonic impressions not knowing which was which, then I would do the same for him, THEN we compared our results. I didn't even know that fish caps were metallicized polyester film until much later. I didn't know what they were made of. I don't think I have expressed my preference for them or not in this thread just that they are only useful for the two .22uf caps in a wah pedal IMO. The closest modern day equivalent are orange drops, not the polypropylene kind. I respect your opinion, as I know you do mine whether or not we agree.

Not that this is of any consequence, but I was going by the boards that battle of midway has sold or tried to sell on Ebay in the past. It is not clear to me, even with this thread if he understands the difference between polystyrene, polyester film metallicized or not, polypropylene, mylar etc. I agree that WIMA caps are terrible in a wah pedal, so are any type of polypropylene cap. I have mentioned this long ago in some thread. I also agree that those .01uf fish caps could be useful in a fuzz pedal. All IMHO.

[R.G.]

Well said. I respect your openness as well as your opinions.

[9 volts]

I asked an antique radio repairman about tropical capacitors. His responce was this......the reason they are called tropical is not because of the stripes but because they have a protected layer on the outside which is strong and resistant for climate changes and altitude changes. So they are still used in aeroplanes and are perfect for extreme weather changes. (they won't crack like ceramic ones in extreme weather conditions). Sonically he felt they were possibly inferior. So if you're playing tunes like 'interstellar overdrive' and sonically soaring high in the stratosphere or do alot of international travel then physically they will stand up to to conditions........but really......
On the subject of capacitors I stupidly bought some orange drop sprague capacitors from small bear which are about 5 cm long (a little too big for the wah enclosure). I personally think that so many of the other mods to wahs have a more influential impact on the sound.
My advice regardless of the capacitors is to turn it up loud and rock out and have some fun! Plug the same wah into a couple different amps and it sounds different anyway! I think Jimi Hendrix would have pulled a good sound out of a plastic toy guitar.(Don't laugh Sir Charlie Parker used to turn up to gigs with a plastic saxophone when his was in hock and still rock the world off its axis!! )
Question- How do you use it and look at the insides at the same time?

[jonathan perez]

i see the material of caps as the fine tunings of the puzzle...otherwise, the average person couldnt tell the difference. its not like i can. 

[lacto]

On the subject of capacitors I stupidly bought some orange drop sprague capacitors from small bear which are about 5 cm long (a little too big for the wah enclosure). I personally think that so many of the other mods to wahs have a more influential impact on the sound.

Yeah, some of those Sprague Orange Drops are HUGE.  Not a stupid mistake. I got some too with all the stuff I bought, not knowing what I was getting.  If you'd known how big they were you wouldn't have gotten them right.    I'd have to look up the number, but it is the polyester version, not the polypropylene like I said earlier.  Agree that the tonal affect of different cap materials for the .22uf's is subtle compared to other components and component values in a wah circuit.

[phillip]

I like the little yellow AVX box metal film capacitors from Mouser...they're just about the toughest capacitors on the planet and they're available in values up to 2.2uF, I believe.  They're available in 5% or 10% tolerances, too.  The 1uF versions are quite small...a little smaller than than 0.22uF Mylars.

Phillip

[puretube]

Ceramic base sockets with silver contacts are best...

[mdh]

It's a very powerful argument to say that one hears subtlties that others cannot hear, because it is impossible to prove a negative. No one can prove that you, for instance, do not actually and truly hear tropical fish caps as less dulling than mylar. However, when issues like this come up, the double blind test has proven very effective. If one person claims to hear something different about one whatever than another, a properly set up double blind test can distinguish whether the person can actually detect at a rate better than mere guessing whether one setup is different from another. As you might guess, there is a longish history of double blind ABX tests as they are called in the audio field. What these tests have shown in general is that the subjectivists (that's the "I can hear it, why can't you?" people) in general do at best what you'd expect from blind guessing, and sometimes they actually select the non-special parts test as the good one. That's really embarassing when it happens to a subjectivist.

I suppose I'm getting into lounge territory with this reply... but so what. This reminds me of my lab partner in college genetics. The major assignment in lab was a series of crosses to map two loci in a fruit fly stock. There were, of course, many marker stocks used in the experiment, one of which carried the Bristle mutation. Not even the lab director of the course claimed to be able to score Bristle in these stocks, but my lab partner, optimist that he was, apparently had it nailed. So I let him score all crosses involving Bristle, which was, in fact, quite the labor-saving device for me. When the data were in at the end of the experiment, it turned out that his decision rule on Bristle was modeled perfectly by an unbiased coin flip, which couldn't have been the case had he been scoring the mutation accurately. Well, at least he wasn't biased in the wrong direction

[alderbody]

I agree that WIMA caps are terrible in a wah pedal, so are any type of polypropylene cap.

+1

IMO they sound unmusical in the wah circuit...

After my own tests on my own wah+gear, i have settled for the Mallory 150 caps and a Nichiden Audio .01 for the sweep.
(close second: polystyrene .01)

btw, i'm not using the HUGE 630V 0.22uF, but the significantly smaller lower voltage ones (can't remember exact value)

About the transistor type, i would agree that the hfe is more critical than the type itself.
For instance, i used to have an NPN Ge for Q1, but it was a bit weak for that. It sounded very sweet, though...