Les Paul/SG tone caps

[BraindeadAudio]

Anyone got anything they could recommend?

I was debating trying the Vitamin T out?

[alexradium]

Any  poly film will do,best quality for the money is Sprague orange drop or Mallory 150,but we are talking about few millivolts to ground...

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[Cortexturizer]

I have some russian PIO caps in my SG and I could hear the difference all right. Sweet mids, SWEET mids, and very gentle highs, much recommended. If you're interested I'll look at the markings on the cap later

[RobA]

Well, you asked for anything -- so, take 'em out. Delete the tone control.

After you delete the tone control, do the treble bleed mod on the volume control. Use any decent film cap (for the treble mod or the tone control cap).

[BraindeadAudio]

I forgot to add an important piece of this.

I have to strictly run LACE pickups.

My LP standard has the coil tapped Dirty Hesher set, My 82 LP has the deathbucker alumitones, my 78 sg has the drop and gains and my 71 japanese SG has the Nitro Hemi.

All of these pickups have resistance over 15k and a few sets have very pronounced midrange already and are made to be played with distortion.

Dont know if that would influence anyones decision at all?

I guess for 50$ I could grab a bunch of different ones and values and try em all out.

I know when I re-did the wiring on my 78 rickenbacker 4001 and tossed some mustard .047 tone caps in there it was instantly better.

[jkokura]

I would say you should be able to spend $5 and get enough to try out.

Honestly - those Vitamin T or the Bumblebee caps are waaaay too expensive for testing out. I'm not sure if any cap is worth what you'd have to pay for those things. Any film cap will do just fine, and once you've found the right value to your ears, maybe then I'd recommend getting a higher cost cap to fill in.

For what it's worth, I use the Mallory 150 spec caps in all the guitar rewires I do. $.50 a piece, keeps the mojo heads happy.

Jacob

[BraindeadAudio]

On a side note, I have a set of Burstbucker 3 w/ PAF sticker and a 57 classic plus w/ PAF sticker for sale for 170$ shipped. Zebra stripe and set up for 170 shipped OBO, taken out of a Les Paul standard.

[DutchMF]

Well, you asked for anything -- so, take 'em out. Delete the tone control.

After you delete the tone control, do the treble bleed mod on the volume control. Use any decent film cap (for the treble mod or the tone control cap).

So true! I have a Silver Series Squier Strat (early 80's, made in Japan) with just a volume control. Sounds amazing! Have to add that it has just 1 PU, a SD bridge HB (thanks Jacob!). The only thing it does not do well is completely clean stuff, but everything with a hair of distortion on it: Heaven! What I'm trying to say is: if you want really good tone, eliminate as much stuff between your fingers and the speakers.

Paul

[BraindeadAudio]

Yea haha.

I use various different settings though for certain things, coil tap the LP to single coil and roll the tone knob off on the neck and kick on a blistering octave fuzz...things like that.

I like versatility and options and dont always run my settings full tilt.

[BraindeadAudio]

I actually debated on my 82 LP putting 2 diff tone cap values on a DPDT toggle switch to flip between them on the neck and bridge. Cant bring myself to drill the cap on my standard and my 78 SG though.

The 82 I got fully sanded down so I dont mind messing with that one haha

[gordo]

Well, you asked for anything -- so, take 'em out. Delete the tone control.

After you delete the tone control, do the treble bleed mod on the volume control. Use any decent film cap (for the treble mod or the tone control cap).

What amps and guitars are you using?  I would have agreed with you till I started using a Vox and a Telecaster.  Now I lean on the tone control as much as I do the volume (which, without a bleed, gets even more involved) and it's opened up a whole nuther can of worms.  I've also been using a Hamer 25th that has a Seymour JB in the bridge and Seth Lover PAF in the neck and the sound is so over the top bright that the tone control is critical.  Never mind that the same pickup combo in a few other guitars sound NOTHING like this one.

I've been putting Sprague's pulled out of a 50 year old phone system lately and they sound crazy good.  It's worth messing around with a few different ones AT STAGE VOLUMES AND IN A LIVE SETTING to figure out what's good.  And like a good scotch or wine, price isn't the ultimate factor.

[RobA]

I use a variety of guitars/pickups and I never, ever, ever use the guitar tone control. Actually, there is one exception which I'll get to in a moment. I don't like how the passive, non-buffered tone controls on a guitar interact with the rest of the responsiveness of the guitar. So, I do all of my tone shaping either in pedals or on the amp. The guitar I tend to use most is a very modified Ibanez SA series. It has two outputs, one for the piezo and one for the magnetics. The magnetics have been replaced with P-Rails and the pickup selector has been replaced with 5 switches that can put the individual pickups into P-90, rail (strat), series HB, or parallel HB modes. The 5th switch allows the combined pickups to be run as normal parallel or series with the bridge routed into the neck pickup. The actual pickup selector has been replaced with a blend pot (MN taper double ganged deal). This setup gives me pretty much all the tone versatility I need without the issues I mentioned above that I have with passive treble rolloff based tone controls.

The one exception I mentioned is my '75 Les Paul which I've put SD Blackouts in. The Blackouts have a nice broad frequency response and since they are active, they have a buffer which comes in before the tone controls. So, the tone controls actually make for an effective treble cut without changing the dynamics of the guitar. 

My favorite tone of all is a P-90 straight out of the guitar with no tone or volume control. At one point, I had a six way pickup selector installed that had two paths, one with volume and one with volume bypassed. I was surprised at how much better the guitar sounded with the volume control out of the circuit. Unfortunately, those particular pickup selectors are really crap and it only lasted about a year. So, I replaced it with the blend pot and I'm actually quite happy with what I can do with that now.