carbon comp years...

[csmatt45]

Hi,

What years did the FX world phase out Car Comp for Car film?? What was the first year car film even existed?

thanks folks,

matt

[R.G.]

The effects world didn't phase out the carbon comp for carbon film - the entire electronics world did.

In the land of real electronics manufacturing, carbon film became cost competitive with carbon comp by advanced manufacturing techniques, and when that happened, the clear superiority of carbon film for 99% of all applications ensured that carbon comp got marginalized.

Even today, carbon comp is still manufactured for niche markets.

As to the timing, in 1973, CC was the standard, 1976 CF was about as common where I was, and by the mid 80's, CC was getting unusual.

It is not possible, if that is what you were thinking, to say that an effect made before X date was made with CC and not CF, or to say that if this box has CFs it was built later than X.

[csmatt45]

Thanks RG. But you could say a device had carb comps in year19XX if carbon film resistors didn't exist until after a certain year, right?

Any idea when they (CF) were first used, period? Were they around but not widely used in the mid to late '60's?

thanks,

matt

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

"Carbon film resistor was developed in 1930s in Germany by Dr. Jack Gingold". According to some lecture notees I found on the net.
But I don't know when they turned up in bulk... I expect that the first use was in RF, because they have low inductance, combined with lower self-generated noise than comps.

[R.G.]

But you could say a device had carb comps in year19XX if carbon film resistors didn't exist until after a certain year, right?

You could - if that time occurred between about 1960 and now. I think the problem is that it happened much earlier.

It's not that CF didn't exist, they just started out rare and expensive.

As they got cheaper, their virtues made them win out, and CC became almost extinct. Not totally, as there is still current manufacture of CC. Probably the right question to ask is when CF hit the same small-quantity price as CC. Effects makers did NOT use expensive, rare parts for their boxes back in the Golden Age. EH is famous for using whatever they could buy cheaply on the surplus market. That practice would lead to people using CC well into the time when manufacturers were dumping surplus CC cheaply in favor of using more accurate, quieter, and more reliable CF on their lines. The timing is well obscured by economics.

On top of that, you have the issue of overlap. An original effects maker might have bought both CF and CC for making their effects during the time when there was price parity or for reasons of scarcity of one or the other. you have to remember - there was no magic mojo associated with CC until the last couple of decades. CF was the expensive, upgrade part in the mid 70s. And if something has been repaired, it probably had CF put in. Techs put in a resistor. They will make an effort to do CC in amps now that they've been infected with Mojo-speak too, but a tech will get a widget to work whatever they have to do. A customer with a working amp/fuzz/whatever is happier if it works but has a CF they don't know about than if their device is waiting in the back of the shop for a CC that can't be obtained.

I think that it would be a mistake to make inferences about a specific date of manufacture based on just CC/CF resistor ratio. It's like trying to date a vintage car manufacture by whether the tires are radials or bias ply.

[markm]

I think that it would be a mistake to make inferences about a specific date of manufacture based on just CC/CF resistor ratio. It's like trying to date a vintage car manufacture by whether the tires are radials or bias ply.

Superb Analogy R.G., Pot code dating of a particular unit may be as accurate as possible but even then that isn't terribly accurate as manufacturers buy in such bulk at times that even pots will last them years. Fender for example, 1966 pots used on guitars up into the '70s. The best that can be done is a guess, an educated guess I suppose but still a guess just the same.