What's the best tone capacitor value/material for a Strat?............

[Tonebender]

I'm trying to decide which kind of capacitor to put in the strat I'm building.......... Foil in oil, polypropylene (did I spell that right?), etc...

I like .022 but I'm also interested in using .015, although I have no experience with that value.

Any help would be appreciated..........Thanks!

[King Friday]

Unsolder the current cap from your tone pot and solder on a couple of 12" leads with alligator clips. Put your pickguard on with these hanging out. then, get a bunch of caps and demo them while really playing.

I did this and found I really dig Mallory 150's. I have a .01 on the neck/middle pot and a .022 on the bridge humbucker.

[monstermikewelch]

My favorite by far are poly .01 caps. They don't roll off a lot of high end, but they make the tone knob much more usable for me. At the lowest point of the rotation, they have an almost hollowbody with P-90s thing going on, and they're great for precisely dialing out the high-end crispiness.

M
www.monstermikewelch.com

[kottkewannabe]

I have to mention this because elsewhere, I have been slammed hard as some sort of paid hype-man. Well, be it known that I just think that this is a good resource...plain and simple. (Nothing personal to anyone here, I'm just new to these parts and wouldn't want any confusion.) With that said, Chris Kinman offers some pretty great pickups, but also some rather helpful commentary on this and other matters. I would highly recommend his treble by-pass filter setup as well, which I believe is included in his pickups these days.

http://www.kinman.com/html/toneWorks...fectGuitar.htm


Happy reading!!

[Tonebender]

Thanks for the input guys.......I already decided on a .022 Sprague Orange Drop for my guitar.

[Dave Paetow]

I always put a jumper wire on the switch so I can have a tone control on the bridge pickup too. That is the one that really needs a tone control.

[MarkU]

Dave,
Can you diagram the tone wiring for the bridge PUP?

[Tonebender]

Here's a diagram from the Torres Engineering site for connecting the tone knob to the bridge pup.

P.S. I decided on a .022 Hovland instead of an Orange Drop. I hope its worth it!

http://www.eventcom.net/strat_tone.html

[MarkU]

Thanks for the link to the Torres site. I thought it had to be a pretty simple wiring plan. I noticed he runs a cap (I'm guessing a .001mfd) on the volume control. I put this on my Tele to retain highs as you roll off the volume, and find it works great on my Strat as well (a 57 I built from Fender parts).

[LightninBoy]

I use a .047mfd on my tone and 120pfd (it's been years since I took Electronics so I'm not sure what these values even mean) on my volume pot and I use Barden pickups - these caps work great for me, the highs don't roll off at all with the volume. I've got a jumper wire on the switch of one of my Strats and the tonal options are just ridiculous - to the point of intimidating - left it off my recently purchased Strat to simplify my choices.....may put it on after I get used to it on the other, although I'm fairly happy with the tonal variety I have without it...