# Vitamin Q's in a Les Paul



## JimiGuy7 (Jan 10, 2008)

Hi everyone, I have been looking into Vitamin Q, Orange Drop and Bumble Bee capacitors and things like that and I am wondering what everyone's thoughts are on what these different capacitors will do to a modern Les Paul. I am a big fan of the Gibson 498t and 490r pickups and I just want to know what these capacitors and maybe some vintage wiring and different pots could do to my Paul. Also, is it possible to mix and match different capacitors in a guitar, if you like one over the other in certain positions?

:rockon2:


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## keefsdad (Feb 7, 2006)

JimiGuy7 said:


> Hi everyone, I have been looking into Vitamin Q, Orange Drop and Bumble Bee capacitors and things like that and I am wondering what everyone's thoughts are on what these different capacitors will do to a modern Les Paul. I am a big fan of the Gibson 498t and 490r pickups and I just want to know what these capacitors and maybe some vintage wiring and different pots could do to my Paul. Also, is it possible to mix and match different capacitors in a guitar, if you like one over the other in certain positions?
> 
> :rockon2:


Nobody seems to be responding, and I don't know the answer to your question either. Maybe try "The Gear Page" those guys are into that stuff, I think.


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## prsrick (May 15, 2009)

go to this web site and read , there is lot of info on this:

http://www.specialtyguitars.com/kits/lespaul.html


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

This topic has been debated many times. 

Changing the electrical value (in uF..microfarads) of the caps will change the tone slightly. A .047 uF will take away more highs, for instance. Yes you can mix the values, no problem. The voltage rating for the caps is virtually meaningless in a guitar, as you are dealing with very small voltages (i.e., millivolts) 

As for how much you pay (in $) for the caps, and if this matters significantly in a guitar circuit, I'm personally of the opinion that it does not, MANY others will disagree.

Changing the pots will also influence tone slightly. In the case of pots, I would buy CTS brand, or similar quality, as the pots eventually suffer from mechanical wear and become scratchy. You can also use different values (250 Kohms, 330 or so Kohms, 500 Kohms, etc.) of pots.

Often, pots will not measure out on a meter to be at the values they are rated for (a 500 Kohm pot could actually measure out to be much lower...for example, 450 Kohms or so). Just thought I'd add that....FYI.

Hope this helps a bit.

The Seymour Duncan forum also has 100's of threads on this topic

Cheers

Dave


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## J S Moore (Feb 18, 2006)

I'll take shot.

I'm a big fan of paper in oil caps for a more vintage sound. Others will give a hi-fi sort of clarity. Luxe makes great repros, RS Guitarworks has excellent caps, as does Acme Guitar Parts.

It's always important for pots to be in spec. For humbuckers the closer to 500k the better, some can be off by as much as 50k. Audio taper for volume. 

50's wiring retains more highs as you roll off the volume and helps keep the neck position from getting muddy. There's no problem with mixing cap and pot values. Some players like a .015 cap for the neck. You could try a 300k pot for the bridge as well if you want to attenuate some highs.


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

J S Moore said:


> I'll take shot.
> 
> I'm a big fan of paper in oil caps for a more vintage sound. Others will give a hi-fi sort of clarity. Luxe makes great repros, RS Guitarworks has excellent caps, as does Acme Guitar Parts.
> 
> ...


JimiGuy7...please understand that I'm not saying you shouldn't try whatever types (and $ value) of caps you like, I'm just not totally convinced that one can hear all that much difference. However, my ears are old and not as "well trained"/acute as J. S. Moores (BTW ...he makes a living creating tone [custom pickups] and has many appreciative customers/followers in this forum). 

For the most part, we are saying the same things in our posts.

Cheers

Dave


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## dwagar (Mar 6, 2006)

I like Vit Qs. Very close to the tone of a real Bee at a lot less $. The Russian PIOs (also found in the Luxe caps) sound good too. I've got a Q in my Melody Maker, and I think I tossed one in my Strat (the EC circuit board uses a .022 cap).

If you're changing from a non-PIO to a PIO you should notice the difference in tone. PIO to PIO is less.

I did a bench test awhile ago, 2 different Russians, a Q, and a real Bee. All were quite close in tone. I've stuck with my Bees, as I thought they were a tiny bit better - but truthfully, you could only discern this on a bench.

The other thing to keep in mind, do you want that vintage tone? It's got a bit of a hollow or vocal effect on roll off. A lot of players want it, but probably just as many don't care for it. Then I'd suggest you look at some nice Mylar caps. Maybe some later Black Beauties or Sangamos or something. 

Anything is an upgrade from ceramics, even Orange Drops.

A bonus to a Les Paul is that it's really easy to bench test caps, just unhook the cap, toss on a couple of clip leads and have fun.

BTW, I use slightly brighter caps, .018s, .015s, .010s. I choose my caps based on where exactly I want them to be on full roll off of the tone control. On the upside, these 'odd' sizes are way, way cheaper than the holy grail .022 400v. The last vintage bees I picked up off Ebay were 3 for $10.


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## Wild Bill (May 3, 2006)

dwagar said:


> I like Vit Qs. Very close to the tone of a real Bee at a lot less $.
> 
> BTW, I use slightly brighter caps, .018s, .015s, .010s. I choose my caps based on where exactly I want them to be on full roll off of the tone control. On the upside, these 'odd' sizes are way, way cheaper than the holy grail .022 400v. The last vintage bees I picked up off Ebay were 3 for $10.


I guess I should start flogging my Bees on Ebay! Don't know if my conscience will let me, though.

As a tech, I frankly don't believe that there's a tone difference between these types. Certainly, I would love to witness a REAL double blind test!

I have in my possession a 1952 Zenith Radio serviceman's bulletin, advising them to yank any BumbleBees they find and replace them, as BumbleBees were considered to be of inferior quality and likely to fail. In other words, crap!

I've been waiting for years for some kind of technical proof about these cap claims. The only one I ever seem to get (over and over and over again!) is the one with the scope traces between ceramic, mylar and polypropylene. What slays me is that although it does show slight differences in the scope curves, if you actually UNDERSTAND what the curves are showing and the voltages/frequencies involved you know that the article is actually proving the OPPOSITE of what it says its trying to prove! It shows the differences to be too small to be significant! Mice nuts!

However, people are going to believe what they want to believe. I guess its easier to swallow mojo than to actually open an electronics book! I suspect that most of these self-appointed 'gurus' can't even read a simple schematic.

:food-smiley-004:


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## wayne (Apr 8, 2009)

I assume you're talking about Steve Bench's page. I've always meant to re-create that experiment so I could actually have control of those scope traces and get a good honest look at the differences. To me, the fuzzy jpeg pictures all look the same with the exception of the very worst ones.

Sadly, mojo is an ever-present part of musical electronics. I recently replaced tone pots and caps in a friend's axe. He e-mailed me a couple of days later raving about his new-found tones. With all the money he spent on caps with special hi-mojo dielectric, i didn't have the heart to tell him that much of what he was digging was the taper of the replacement pots. Sure, the capacitors alone would have made an improvement, but I feel (no way to tell, we replaced everything at once) that a new set of pots alone would have been more noticeable than new caps alone.

W


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

Wild Bill said:


> As a tech, I frankly don't believe that there's a tone difference between these types. Certainly, I would love to witness a REAL double blind test!


Most of the guitar/amp techs on the Seymour Duncan forum also said this repeatedly. A double blind test was carried out buy some (reportedly) very talented guitarists and techs together and the results supported that the less expensive caps (e.g., mylar) did as well as the caps that were vintage or Hovlands at about $20.00 US each. 

Still, the debate continued.

There should be some old (and lively) threads in the "archives" of this forum on the same topic.

Cheers

Dave


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

You know Bill, some 30 odd years ago, I worked in a neuroscience lab at McMaster. We were looking at daylight effects on hamster nuts. At 8hrs daylight and 16hrs darkness they were "mice nuts". When we increased daylength to 16hrs, those mice nuts increased 1000% and those poor buggers were dragging them around like Santa's toybags.

With that apocryphal (but true) tale, I will simply note that sometimes weird things DO make a difference. The challenge is discerning whether THIS is one of those times.

For a long time, I pooh-poohed the idea. I figured a cap is a cap is a cap. I still think it's stupid that Gibson and everyone else have been using the same cap value for the neck and bridge tone controls all these years (who wants to "mute" a bridge pickup?), but that's separate from which type of cap.

Then, more recently, over at MEF, my attention was drawn to the fact that even a 500k tone pot is really not a particularly high resistance, and under those circumstances the leakage properties of the cap might matter, especially if it is a .05 rather than a smaller value. So, while capacitance IS capacitance, I can see where some players might feel that certain types of caps deprive them of whatever treble their pickups have, even at max treble on the tone pot. It is also fair to say that caps have properties beyond mere capacitance and leakiness which could interact with the inductance of the pickups. Would it matter for ALL pickups or rigs? I doubt it. But some, probably.

The thing that both of us would probably shake our heads in exasperation about is the wholesale belief that a certain type of cap will *always* sound "better" regardless of other circumstances.


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## bagpipe (Sep 19, 2006)

mhammer said:


> those mice nuts increased 1000% and those poor buggers were dragging them around like Santa's toybags.


I don't know much about the caps in question, but I nominate this for Post of the Week, based on that mental image alone ! ! :smilie_flagge17:

Excellent work Mark. You should've been an author.


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## dwagar (Mar 6, 2006)

I always scratch my head when people ask for some scientific data determining the difference in caps. That's like asking for scientific data determining which guitar/amp has the best tone. It's subjective, not scientific.

Take a 1/2 hour, try a few. Let your ears be your guide. 

The main difference IMO is due to construction. PIOs are going to sound different than a Mylar and different than a ceramic disk.

The minute differences within these families, as I said above, I think are really only something you can hear comparing them on a bench.


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