Oil in paper caps

LastMantra

It's quite hard to explain. More of a "mechanical" thing not some added mojo sparkle to your tone. The way the player interacts with the instrument so I suppose it does effect the over all "tone" of the music being produced...if you get me? 

So if you are a very subtle player that uses the tone control a lot it would be worth looking into IMO. Although if you do find that an expensive, fancy cap is what works for you it's pure coincidence or, as has been mentioned, some sort of "placebo" effect.

@Frankus If you take, for example, the input/output caps on a simple fuzz build, I have not only a selection of various values but a selection of various makes, types in the most common values, because they all have slightly different *actual* values. For fine tuning. 

I've found that I generally like the cheap ceramic ones for this job as the sound more "open"...because they are often slightly lower value than the more expensive, tighter tolerance ones, where going down a whole value would be too much..........value.   

imalone

LastMantra said:

ICBM said:

LastMantra said:

Thing is you can say "given the same value" all caps will sound the same, but how often does that happen?

Very often, if you use tighter tolerance ones - 10% or better. You can't hear small differences in the value anyway.

When I did direct-switching testing, there was no audible difference between *any* of the .022uF caps I tried, even though quite a few weren't dead on the spec value. There is a reason why the tolerances are chosen the way they are.

I get you IC but all I mean is, if you two very tight tolerance caps of two different values but you find that you want something somewhere in the middle then the very wide 40% ceramic might get you there and IMHO be the "better" cap (for the job).

What do you mean "audible difference", what exactly where you testing for? As I said, IMO it's about how the control reacts. Very, very subtle.

That's one thing about the ceramics, poor tolerance. Like you say in your later post that can be helpful if you're hand picking for a non-standard value. They also have poorer electrical characteristics than polys, though ICBM's test suggests no difference at guitar voltages and frequencies (and better electrical characteristics isn't always going to be the same as sounds better).
When I see people describing ceramics as 'brittle' then I get suspicious, like wine tasting where people use 'appropriate' (plums and berries for red etc.) words when they know the colour, but don't do so well tasting blind.
Anyway, now planning an interesting project...

suspiciousminds

I've swapped a few caps in my guitars usually for vintage type ceramic disc, based on the difference it made to my jagstang.
Not sure about "brittle" but there was definately an improvement on tone, in particular when using gain, i always found it a little muddy sounding but its quite grainey now if that makes sense.