Capacitor value?

[JamesLens]

Hey guys

So I was looking on the wiring for pickups on the Seymour Duncan website, and in the diagram it has ".047 cap". Does this mean 0.047uF? More importantly, if that's the case, I have a capacitor on which it is written "0.047" on the top line and on the bottom line "K.100"; is this the right one? Also will .022 caps make that huge of a difference?

Thanks very much in advance,

James

[GuitarDoc]

Yes, .047 uf.
And yes, the .022 makes a huge difference in your tone as the tone knob is rolled off. It will allow more of the upper mids to stay. The .022 will remove the highs only, the .047 will reduce the highs and the upper mids. I personally dislike the dull muted sound of .047 caps.

[RayBarbeeMusic]

.022uf removes a massive amount of mids. If you need the guitar to sound like the amp is burried in the yard when the tone is rolled back though, it works well for that.

The world wont stop turning if you use something smaller. I like really small caps like .0022uf. Buy a variety from .0022uf to .022uf, some aligator clips, and experiment to find what you like.

[Gypsyblue]

Depends on the guitar and the mood I'm in.

With humbuckers I always prefer .02.

But I have two Strats with single coils, one with a .02 cap and one with the factory stock .047. Some days the Strat with the .02 cap feels a little to bright and on those days I prefer playing the Strat with the .047 cap - that Strat feels like it has a warmer, fuller tone.

Generally, I prefer .02 for both humbuckers and single coils - but not always. Like I said, it depends on the mood I'm in...and the weather...and how my ears are hearing things on any given day. It changes.

[ItsaBass]

Cap values for guitars are usually expressed in microfarads.

The cap value determines which frequencies get rolled off when you turn down the tone pot to the bottom end of the range. The lower the value, the less high end and midrange you lose when you have your pot turned down low. Therefore, on 0, a .022 mF cap on your tone pot will leave you with more midrange than a .047.

If you always play dimed, or always have your tone set in the upper end of the pot's travel, a different cap value will make a negligible difference in your tone.

I use .01 or .0047 caps on most of my tone pots, because I like to retain a healthy amount of midrange when I zero the pot.

[AlexR]

There is, however a difference in tone by connecting the tone circuit and not. That would seem to indicate that there is some loading. I would imagine that the capacitor value would play a part in how that loading is 'seen' by the pickup/guitar circuit.

[Gypsyblue]

There is, however a difference in tone by connecting the tone circuit and not. That would seem to indicate that there is some loading. I would imagine that the capacitor value would play a part in how that loading is 'seen' by the pickup/guitar circuit.

Loading might not be the right word. I'm not sure. Even with the tone control on 10 some treble always leaks through the tone cap and tone control. It's why a bright single coil Strat pickup sounds better with 250K pots: treble leaks through to ground more easily than it would with 500K pots and the overall tone of the guitar is then less glassy and ice picky. With no tone pot that particular path to ground doesn't exist so the overall tone of the guitar will be a little brighter. It would also be brighter with 500K pots. More resistance (500K vs. 250K) resists those highs leaking through and going to ground, instead of going down the guitar cord and into your amplifier to be amplified.

[Dark Order Lord]

Loading might not be the right word. I'm not sure. Even with the tone control on 10 some treble always leaks through the tone cap and tone control. It's why a bright single coil Strat pickup sounds better with 250K pots: treble leaks through to ground more easily than it would with 500K pots and the overall tone of the guitar is then less glassy and ice picky. With no tone pot that particular path to ground doesn't exist so the overall tone of the guitar will be a little brighter. It would also be brighter with 500K pots. More resistance (500K vs. 250K) resists those highs leaking through and going to ground, instead of going down the guitar cord and into your amplifier to be amplified.

What about a 1mega Ohm pot... Is that better for darker picups like a a PA TB2 ??????

[ItsaBass]

With my 250K Esquire pot/.047 cap dimed, I hear no effective difference at all when switching to the tone pot bypass. An extremely slight addition of some "clatter," which you can only hear if you are really, really, really listening close to it. Imperceptible in the real world. And those part values are about as bassy as people use on guitars. There would be even less difference with higher-value pots and/or lesser-value caps.

This doesn't mean the no load switch setting is useless. It just means you can treat it as a switch to instantly give you 10 on the tone pot, and then set the tone lower for a switchable tone that has the treble rolled off. It's nice to be able to do an instantaneous switch to, or away from, full dime without having to turn the pot to do it.

Where cap value really comes into play in the real world is when you have your tone pots turned down toward the bottom part of their range.

[Gypsyblue]

EVH does use a tone control on his guitars these days. Back in the old days, he said his guitar sounded better to him without a tone control. He started using a tone control when he stopped building his own guitars and no doubt most players do prefer a tone control so I'm sure his guitars sold better with a tone control - that probably had some bearing on why the tone control was added. To me, my guitar "feels" brighter without a tone control. I don't know if I can actually "hear" a difference or not. I agree that the difference is slight.

[GuitarDoc]

.022uf removes a massive amount of mids. If you need the guitar to sound like the amp is burried in the yard when the tone is rolled back though, it works well for that.

C'mon Ray. You must have extremely sensitive high frequency hearing. What you said is a horribly misleading exageration to those with normal hearing, and won't be of much use to the OP.

Some describe the effect of a .047uf as a blanket over the speaker when the tone knob is rolled off. But a .022uf would never sound like "the amp is burried in the yard".

A .022uf removes a small amount of the upper mids, mainly affecting only the higher frequencies. A .010uf essentially has no affect on the mids and only affects the highs.

A .0022uf will only affect the highs that most people only hear as a "hiss". Not much musical value will be reduced by a .0022uf. It will most certainly not be even noticed in a band situation.

[Gypsyblue]

What about a 1mega Ohm pot... Is that better for darker picups like a a PA TB2 ??????

Hi Dark, I would think that 500K would sound best to me, but a volume pot with twice the resistance (1 meg) would brighten it up some. You should experiment. It's always best to hear it with your own ears.

[ItsaBass]

What about a 1mega Ohm pot... Is that better for darker picups like a a PA TB2 ??????

A higher value pot won't reduce the amount of low end. It will just add some high end on top of the mud. Sometimes that is enough to make the guitar sound like you want, but sometimes it isn't.

[idsnowdog]

Buy a few different values and build a test rig with long leads and alligator clips. That way you can test to see which you like best. You can use different values for neck/bridge.

[tourettes]

I use an exageratedly low value for my tone pot 220pF.

I tested this after the regular capacitor shortcut. As I got no immediate substitute i took the volume capacitor in place (it keeps some treeble for low volumes) that has this value.

The result is a very smooth tone action. I dislike how it sounded before the tone all way down, some lo fi mud. Now it keeps a rich sound but just the higher frequencies cut, some kind of unbright.

I also noticed my other guitar with no tone is punchier with the same pup, so i think of a tone pot with a swich cut on the position 10 to keep the tone pot but also have a direct input. I think this exists on some Fender.

[RayBarbeeMusic]

C'mon Ray. You must have extremely sensitive high frequency hearing. What you said is a horribly misleading exageration to those with normal hearing, and won't be of much use to the OP.

Some describe the effect of a .047uf as a blanket over the speaker when the tone knob is rolled off. But a .022uf would never sound like "the amp is burried in the yard".

A .022uf removes a small amount of the upper mids, mainly affecting only the higher frequencies. A .010uf essentially has no affect on the mids and only affects the highs.

A .0022uf will only affect the highs that most people only hear as a "hiss". Not much musical value will be reduced by a .0022uf. It will most certainly not be even noticed in a band situation.

Nice post, other than it being 100% completely inaccurate on every single point.

My advice is actually try it before you post on something you don't understand, and you might also do some research on the actual frequencies that get rollled off.

.0022uf on a humbucker has a very pronounced effect. It takes a solid body and makes it sound like a good L5. The tone is VERY useful in a band situation as it mellows the tone out BUT DOES NOT KILL THE MIX CUTTING ABILITY OF THE INSTRUMENT like .047uf or .022uf.

The other thing you don't know is that pickups in parallel respond differently than single pickups, and that single coils respond different to a tone cap than a humbucker. In general, to get the same roll off, you need double the size cap to get the same aural affect on pickups in parallel than on a single pickup, and double the size cap on single coils as humbuckers.

Thats why on humbucker guitars I often put in a push/pull with a .0022uf and a .0047uf, or on singles a .0047uf and .01uf or .0033uf and .0056uf.

So why don't you actually try it and listen to it before spouting off. I've done that mod on more guitars than I can even count, I have yet to have anyone tell me they couldn't hear it or didn't think it was an improvement.

[tourettes]

.0022uf on a humbucker has a very pronounced effect. It takes a solid body and makes it sound like a good L5. The tone is VERY useful in a band situation as it mellows the tone out BUT DOES NOT KILL THE MIX CUTTING ABILITY OF THE INSTRUMENT like .047uf or .022uf.

YES, even .00022uF is interresting for me, those who use presence pots and brightness switch on the amplifier deal with such low capacity value.

It's true this is for clean play.

[ratherdashing]

Nice post, other than it being 100% completely inaccurate on every single point.

My advice is actually try it before you post on something you don't understand, and you might also do some research on the actual frequencies that get rollled off.

.0022uf on a humbucker has a very pronounced effect. It takes a solid body and makes it sound like a good L5. The tone is VERY useful in a band situation as it mellows the tone out BUT DOES NOT KILL THE MIX CUTTING ABILITY OF THE INSTRUMENT like .047uf or .022uf.

The other thing you don't know is that pickups in parallel respond differently than single pickups, and that single coils respond different to a tone cap than a humbucker. In general, to get the same roll off, you need double the size cap to get the same aural affect on pickups in parallel than on a single pickup, and double the size cap on single coils as humbuckers.

Thats why on humbucker guitars I often put in a push/pull with a .0022uf and a .0047uf, or on singles a .0047uf and .01uf or .0033uf and .0056uf.

So why don't you actually try it and listen to it before spouting off. I've done that mod on more guitars than I can even count, I have yet to have anyone tell me they couldn't hear it or didn't think it was an improvement.

Well, when you consider that pretty much every stock guitar on Earth has either a .022 or (shock! horror!) .047 tone cap in it, your "amp buried in the back yard" comment is ... a wee bit of an exaggeration maybe?

Also, keep in mind we're talking about a tone pot, i.e. it has a large range of effectiveness over the rotation of the pot. You can roll the pot all the way down for a big cut (a very useful smooth, jazzy tone actually), turn it down to 9 to shave off a bit of highs and high mids, or anything in between. It's not like we're talking about an all-or-nothing switch here.

Really, it just comes down to what your goal is with a tone pot. If you want to be able to take a bigger bite out of the treble and high mids, use a .022 or even a .047. If you want to roll off treble only, that's a .010. Anything lower than .010 is going to only be effective on the high treble band. That's completely fine if that's what you want from your tone control, but don't pretend it's anything other than a high treble/presence cut.

As for the actual frequencies that get rolled off, I'm sure a smart guy like you knows how to calculate the corner frequency of a first order passive low-pass filter, right? Of course you do. But for the benefit of everyone else, here's the formula:



fc = corner frequency (the highest frequency the filter lets through)
R = series impedance load, in Ohms
C = capacitor value, in Farads

In the case of a guitar's tone pot, the series impedance load is the impedance of the pickups themselves, therefore the results of this equation will vary depending on your pickups. For the sake of argument, let's try this out with a '59 bridge, which is 6.8k.

For a .047 uF (47 nF) cap:
fc = 1 / (2 * pi * 6800 * 47 * 10^-9) = 497 Hz

For a .022 uF (22 nF) cap:
fc = 1 / (2 * pi * 6800 * 22 * 10^-9) = 1063 Hz

For a .010 uF (10 nF) cap:
fc = 1 / (2 * pi * 6800 * 10 * 10^-9) = 2341 Hz

For a .0047 uF (4.7 nF) cap:
fc = 1 / (2 * pi * 6800 * 4.7 * 10^-9) = 4980 Hz

For a .0022 uF (2.2 nF) cap:
fc = 1 / (2 * pi * 6800 * 2.2 * 10^-9) = 10638 Hz

A hotter pickup will lower the corner frequency, of course, but as you can see those really low value caps are only shaving off the highs. The .0022 is basically a presence control, in fact.

Final note: the cut-off at the corner frequency is more of a slope than a hard chop. There is no such thing as an "ideal" low-pass filter in the real world, so keep in mind that even at zero, your tone pot is letting through plenty of frequencies above the corner.

Like I said, if that's what you want from a tone pot, that's totally fine, but don't make like anyone who chooses otherwise is an idiot.

[RayBarbeeMusic]

Your calculations of the frequencies are incorrect.

I didn't say anyone who chooses otherwise is an idiot. Only that people who say that you shouldn't use a small one but have never actualy tried it are idiots.

Again, instead of "I think cuz I thunk it out and read it in a book" I suggest you actually try it and listen to it. I actually do this sh*t all day long, every day.

Also, tone controls really don't have much of an effect above the first few marks on the knob. So "all or nothing" it may not be, but between 3 and 10 you really don't get much noticeable affect. I've used 100k and smaller no-loads for that reason. All the way up it is out of the circuit, then when you roll it back the effect comes in quicker.

To that end, if what you want is subtlety, a smaller cap gives you that subtlety and preserves your midrange and mix cutting ability more than a .022uf.

The Tonestyler was a tone control gizmo that had 15 different caps on it from sub 1000pf range all the way up to the dinosaur values of .022uf and .0047uf. It was a really cool device, but guitar players are too stuck in the past to experiment with an innovative tone control, or spend as much on a tone control as on a pickup even though that thing could make at least as much difference in sound as a different pickup.

But if you want to stick to "I ONLY LIKE VANILLA BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT HAS HISTORICALLY BEEN USED AND I ALREADY KNOW I HATE CHOCHOLATE EVEN THOUGH I HAVEN'T TRIED IT AND YOU CAN'T MAKE ME AND I'LL SPEND HOURS TYPING ABOUT HOW CHOCHOLATE SUCKS RATHER THAN THE 15 MINUTES IT WOULD TAKE TO TRY IT AND GET REAL KNOWLEDGE"

Then that's up to you.

[ratherdashing]

Your calculations of the frequencies are incorrect.

Can you elaborate please? Show me where my mistakes are. I'm very curious.

Also, where did I mention that I haven't tried these other cap values? I read back over my post and I couldn't find that.