I know the green chicklet looking ones have a bad reputation for tone or coupling caps. What about these others? Especially the brown chicklets?
Or, the long yellow one.
Opinions on which ones I should be using?
And what do you call these different styles?
I'd experiment a bit. I wouldn't be surprised if the best one is that old Mallory but I've never used one that looks like that one.
Is it for an amp or a guitar?
Amp...tone, or coupling.
What about those brown ones?
(the two in the lower right)...
I have a ton of those.
Unfortunately only a handful of the old oddballs, pulled out of various amps throughout the years.
Dunno about them.
They look a bit like OD 716Ps which, in the tweed Bassman clone I tried them in, were the worst caps I ever tried (I had expected it based on what I'd heard about them, I just wanted to hear it for myself).
Apparently they work better in Marshalls or hifi amps.
Is that yellow one a Weber 150-a-like?
Tommy.
That green one in the upper right. Those old waxy-caps get all leaky, and sound great as telecaster tone caps. Find an old 0.047uF, and if it reads ~0.1uF or so on a meter, you're good to go.Originally Posted by Cygnus X1
That light green one in the center looks to be similar construction to the old "mustard" caps. I'd check that one out.
The darker green chicklet next to it are generally considered low grade. You'll find those in Boss stompboxes, and low end Asian guitars.
The silver one next to it, I believe has a similar lineage and tone to the chicklet.
The yellow one - that looks like the ones that Weber sells or a recent Mallory. I have a suspicion they're the same.
The green one on the bottom. I've seen those before in old amp. Probably pretty decent.
The brown one next to it - that looks like a 'chocolate drop' in a SF Fender. Pitch it out before it contaminates the rest of the supply.
Several guitars in different colors
Things to make them fuzzy
Things to make them louder
orange picks
Thanks Kap'n!
Anyone want to buy a bunch of brown chocolate drops? :)
Fortunately they didn't cost much.
Ooh...didn't see the "tropical fish" cap on the right. Those were used in all the Italian Vox stuff, like wahs.
Oh, if you see any blue caps similar in shape to the center brown one - those are supposed to sound pretty good in certain amp applications.
Several guitars in different colors
Things to make them fuzzy
Things to make them louder
orange picks
Sorry for the garbage pic.
Yes, I have a couple of those rainbow colored ones.
I'm playing with the 15 watt Single Ended Lead amp project.
When I first powered up, there was no sound coming from the first gain stage. It turned out that one of those chocolate drops was bad.
So I put an old Sprague in there. Wow! what a difference in dynamics!
In the spirit of experimentation, I'm thinking of trying the Weber Mallory next (the yellow 333). I have plenty of those.
I put those yellow Webers in the coupling areas, and replaced all the tone caps with the aqua's that came out of an Ampeg V4. All the chocolate drops are gone.
My first impression was...it has more gain!
Once I turned the gains down a bit, it has better tone.
I had given up the idea of this kind of amp having anything close to a good clean sound.
Then, I switched the power tube from the 6550 to an old Sylvania 6V6 I had kicking around. So far, so good.
It's pretty amazing how much caps can influence the tone of an amp. Not one or two so much, but the sum total.
However, it's the icing on the cake, really. A speaker, for one, will influence the sound of an amp more than just about anything other than circuit topology.
Several guitars in different colors
Things to make them fuzzy
Things to make them louder
orange picks
I like to run everything through the same cab when I'm playing around with options.
Scientific method, so to speak.
Make the variables into fixed values....
That's good to some extent, but sometimes there's just the magic combination you'll miss because you were through the wrong speaker. Try everything, I say. You know Ken Fischer, etc. did it.
Several guitars in different colors
Things to make them fuzzy
Things to make them louder
orange picks
I'd love to think I'm at that level of amp building!
I'm just playin' around here, I don't really have a clue...
I have a ton of work to do outdoors, but Fay has dampened things here a bit today.
Last edited by Cygnus X1; 08-27-2008 at 10:01 PM.
I replaced ALL those chocolate chicklets with the Weber (Mallory-looking) ones in this SEL amp, along with some of the vintage caps. All in the coupling stages and the tone stack.
I certainly have been edu-macated!
Turning the gains down to 1/4 gives off a tone that mimics the 5E3 I just built. Nice!
Touch sensitivity has vastly improved, you all know what that means.
High gain is good, BUT diming the gains and pushing the master volume past 9:00 is a risky proposition for potential feedback/ squeel/ demonic possesion kind of noises. Picked artificial harmonics have improved.
I didn't intend to run this 15 watt that loud, anyways.
Goodbye, chicklets!
I have settled on the Mallory-ish yellow caps in all my builds now. Not to say I wouldn't use another type, but so far, the Mallory 150 style caps just do well all around.
"...pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field;
that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little,
shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour."
-Edmund Burke
Yup, they're good caps. I use them in everything too.
I've thought about trying some PIO in my 5E3 just for fun but I can never find the right values cheap enough so never mind.
Tommy.
upper left cap....is that a Grey Tiger?
Again, I should have used a better camera and lighting.
That cap is a green Sangumo <sp>. Value is supposed to be .047, it tests at .06, so I haven't used it. I don't know where it came from.
Another update...
I still had some of those chocolates and orange drops in both the Deluxe Reverb and the 5E3. I didn't have what I needed on hand at the time to replace them.
I went through and put in the yellow caps I bought from Weber (similar to the Mallory 150's). The first thing that happened is...no more snaps, crackles, and pops! They killed a lot of the hiss, also.
Tone?
I would estimate just like Leo intended...sweet!
I am a big fan of the greenish Cornell Dublier (kinda what the upper left looks like) as well as the old paper 50s Mallory and the 60s blue molded Mallory. The newer skinny yellow Weber type are OK too. I have all kinds of old caps, including NOS tropical fish and a huge bag of those dull yellow Marshall type ones. Unfortunately, those are all the same value 100k IIRC...
Gris...please don't tell me there is something better.
I'm really happy about how these sound at the moment.
Yeah Gris, those blue molded caps are great. I've enough spares from my Twin rewiring to do my Bassman.
I've a couple of old CDs (black Jaguar and pink Tiny Chief) to use in my 6A20.
Got a few hours set aside tomorrow for it.
Cygnus, I really like the Webers too. I use them in everything I build and I swap PIOs a few places based on what my ears tell me.
Tommy.
Tommy.
The green CD's are the shiznit. It's part of what makes the Prince G sound the way it does...
Green CD's?
What do they look like?
(Besides green).
Cornell-Dublier, right?
Several guitars in different colors
Things to make them fuzzy
Things to make them louder
orange picks
No, they don't look like that. They look more like the orig poster's pic (upper left). They are big and waxy. They're all over my Silvertone. I was pissed when my buddy 'helped' me out by clipping the death cap from it (a CD) by snipping the leads it right at the cap itself - arrrgghhhhh...
Ouch! That stinks!
I replaced two missing blue molded Mallorys in my Vibrolux Reverb with the death caps from the VR and my Princeton Reverb!
Here's a few more.
Pulled from a 1950's Hammond M2 organ amp and some from a Gulbransen:
What's that brown ceramic doodad with the wire swirl in it?
And those two resistor-looking ones on the bottom are a mystery also.
Put a KT66/7581A in that SE amp.
Thanks, Gris.
Whenever I get one!
Right now the prototype sings with a 6V6,
and the SEL-2 has been converted to a 6SN7.
Both are great.
You took caps out of a V-4? I've been looking for one to re-build!!! We use 630V Vishay Roedersteins in the workshop for virtually all repairs and new builds - they're cheap, sound great and are almost always bang on value - very similar to Mallory 150's but are usually a little bit wider and shorter in length... I expect the Weber 150 copies acheive the same end (though I hasten to add that I've never had any experience with them) - I can't believe you've used a V-4 as a donor Cyg!!!
Last edited by yankeerob; 12-15-2008 at 03:43 AM.
If I could find a road to get away it wouldn't be too soon....... Shipwreck Moon.......
That V4 is long ago and far away.
I think the bare chassis is up in the attic, but I'm not too sure.
It had severe damage, it actually caught fire when it was in my old store. Pretty sure the PT was fried, and the OT section is what burned.
I tried to rebuild it with another V4, I put the filter caps in exactly backwards, and it exploded those huge caps on my workbench.
Scared me enough so that I stopped fooling with amps for a few years!
So I might have the iron from the donor somewhere, but not real sure.
How about Spragues?
I have quite a few pulls of "Black Beauties", and bumble bees.
But I have a bucketload of Sprague "Tan Beauty" 157P 100V
caps coming out of a Baldwin organ. They look pristine!
I hope they have good tone value.
I haven't counted, there are perhaps 200.
Values .001 to .057 uf.
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