It seems that the cryptic component in our electric guitars are the tablet-sized capacitors which are hidden away at the tone pot. To those of us who had not ventured into the body cavities of our instruments, you might not know what is actually being discussed here... Anyway, a capacitor is an electrical component that stores energy in the electric field between a pair of plates (conductors) whose role in many electrical equipment is to store energy. To the average guitar dweeb, you need to know that this energy storage affects the output of your instrument. We hear this output over at our amp as the sound of our instrument so having a capacitor in our guitars affect the sound even when they are left wide open ie. your tone pot dialled up to the max.
However, do note that the 'energy storage' function is a fundamental understanding of how the capacitor works. In our guitars, the energy storage is used to differentiate frequencies & the general rule here is, the bigger the capacitor value, the deeper sounding it gets. But let's not head to the shops fervently to acquire these capacitors because we know they are indeed affordable components for our guitar mod adventures- some of our ears cannot detect the tonal differences.
9 comments:
bro sub, look forward to hearing more sound clips from you :)
Aren't capacitors bypassed electrically when tone knob is up fully?
depends on the circuit. some Fenders are wired as such- the NO LOAD tone they call it.
capacitors store charge, not energy. Just a small technical definition change:)
Caps stores DC charge, but lets AC passes through, instead acting as a freq filter. -JS :)
i've gotten the bits for this posting from a 'dummies' guide to capacitors (yes, i'm still a dummy after all these years). they replaced some technical terms to let the lay person have a grasp of what's going on when it comes to capacitors. on matters pertaining to 'charges', they would want us to understand that there is some sort of energy-based activity taking place which is happening all over the circuitry in fact, not just the capacitors.
we read elsewhere that some folks tread the no-capacitors turf; they do away with the tone pot entirely & refuse to equip the volume pot with a treble bleed capacitor hence making their tone more open. how beneficial is this to us in terms of clarity remains to be established because we can get very bright tones from our capacitors, yes?
Capacitors, as most of you know, play an important part in "Tone" of your total sound. Different manufacturers make a difference in sound also. Probably the best capacitor for music tone is the "Hoviland" brand. They are quite expensive and hard to find. They run in the price range of about $15 for just one but they create a very nice tone for your instrument. I prefer to use the "Sprague" Orange Drop Capacitor, Mallory 150, and most oil filled caps. Price is a little better too. Ceramics are good for throwing away and are found in a great deal of Fender guitars. Another good use for capacitors in guitar circuits are to set them up as "Brilliance Controls" using a fixed value resistor to ground and switching them in and out. Very useful for taming the high "Ping" of a hot output pickups. Experiment with them to find the best results for tone. Sincerely, Stan House, Custom Guitar Builder, from Copperas Cove, Texas.
quote: Ceramics are good for throwing away and are found in a great deal of Fender guitars.
he he... wonder why they still appear in those guitars by default :-)
Woah. . . . So much detailed explaining about tis,. . . .To those who simply find it to complicated just remember the 3 magical Words. . . GO TO Beez. . Hehehehe
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