Auditioning signal caps?

[Mark]

I have a few caps I want to compare.

Has anyone tried this and what worked best. So far all the caps sound the same with my results.

[roberto]

what kind of comparison have you done?
With which instruments? What's the circuits and the point where you have switched capacitors? How have you switched capacitors?
What are the kind of capacitors your have compared?

[overtone]

my 2cents:

I use a home-made "ghetto" capacitor selector box:
two rows of block connectors to take 10 or 12 caps
a make-before-break rotary selector
run a shielded cable in from where the cap would be located in the amp
and back out again.
Test live with a six string.

It allows an instant A-B-C-D etc. comparison between different values and / or types.
For sure, expect many to sound the same!

You sometimes need to take into account that running the test outside of the amp will effect the result.
As I said, it is a "ghetto" solution.
Not for nit-pickers.

These days I usually only audition the first coupling cap after V1.

Best, tony

[Mark]

I have been using my Kendrick Roughneck as a test bed to evaluate cap types, so far I've compared 715's to Sozo standard mustard caps, Sozo blue molded, and Jupiter RED caps. I have recorded these caps, but to be honest I don't hear any real difference between them from the recordings I've made.

This is the process I'm using.

I decided to record the guitar dry and put that into the amp. I used a 1Khz test tone to get the signal levels correct. The guitars are my Les Paul and my Strat.

I used a Weber Mass as a speaker load and the amps line out to go to the computer. I'm using a mic pre-amp from Pod Farm (set flat) to kick the levels up a bit.

I have avoid using a mic as they can be a bit of a hassle to get right.

I want to put the caps on a switch so I can listen to the differences in real time and compare that to what is recorded.

The question is why do I hear differences in the various caps yet the testing proves they all sound much the same?

[diagrammatiks]

well the recording goes through an additional level filters and convertors.

Capacitors are nuanced. It's unlikely that you'll hear a difference 100 percent of the time in all situations.

A lot of their effects are right where mic and adda convertors start to compress.

[rdjones]

They sound the same because they are largely the same.
Any difference in sound is going to be order(s) of magnitude below most anything else that effects 'guitar tone'.

As Tony points to, the first cap in the signal path is likely the most important in terms of any noticeable differences because it has the most gain after it.
If the first caps are the tone stack consider that they are effectively in parallel as far as the signal path is concerned and any difference will be divided between them.

What are you monitoring with ? In what environment ?
Monitoring system and room treatment (or lack of) will mask minute differences.

RedDog Steve

[thejaf]

From my own meager experience, I noticed a way huge difference in swapping out the parallel caps on the long tail PI. On my recent build I swapped the generic white 150-type 0.1mF I had used with a pair of 715s. A huge improvment in depth, warmth, and clarity. The previous ones were very sterile, stiff, and raspy on the top end.

I never beleived the hype, but that experience changed my perspective.