Les Paul capacitors

Country Boy Shane · Post by **Country Boy Shane** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 10:09 am

dosmun wrote:Next question.

How many of you actually use the Tone controls on your guitar. On my Les Paul I never do. Sometimes when I use my Strat I may back of the Tone just a bit. The Players that are spending HUGE $$$ on the Bumble Bee caps are just plain Gullible IMHO.

I use them quite a lot. When i want a bit thicker rhythm sound on my bridge pickup, i roll it to about 8. When i'm doing clean parts with the volumes on each pickup set pretty low, i usually roll off the tone knobs more so it sounds much warmer. It's amazing what tones you can get by just fidgiting with your knobs!

Also try this. When you've selected both pickups on a Les Paul, it's fun to experiment with the volume and tone levels on each pickup so you can blend some very interesting sounds. This versatility of the Les Paul is probably one of the best reasons i switched from playing Strats for a while, and stuck with the Les Paul.

Flames1950 · Post by **Flames1950** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 12:19 pm

Simply having a capacitor/tone control in the circuit will affect your sound, whether you use it or not. Different caps may affect your high end differently, and different value pots too.

daniel · Post by **daniel** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 12:28 pm

since my last post I have realized two things. I got jacked and the caps I bought are two high for guitar. They really did improve the tone of the guitar but since the value is so high the tone knob doesn't even function. Thanks to whoever put up the black rose link, I'm gonna get some .022uf caps from them.

dosmun · Post by **dosmun** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 1:01 pm

I ordered some Orange drops in both .022uF and .047uF and also a pair of the Mallory's in .022uF.

If you go to the Les Paul forum there are a few articles on pots over there. One that is interesting is putting nail polish on the traces of one end of the pot so when you turn the Tone all of the way up it totally bypasses the Tone circuit.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 1:03 pm

I can't wait to get my new pots and caps. I have learned a lot more about this subject in just the last week.

More things to spend $$$$ on.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 1:09 pm

I hav been a guest on most of my posts today. I guess I must be out to lunch

dosmun · Post by **dosmun** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 1:11 pm

I still keep showing up as a guest. My name shows up at the bottom as being logged in.

signed dosmun

dosmun · Post by **dosmun** » Sat Oct 30, 2004 5:52 pm

Got my caps and pots form Black Rose Customs. Awesome service. I will post when I get them installed.

dirtydeeds22 · Post by **dirtydeeds22** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 10:08 am

I ordered pots and caps from blackrose custom last friday, got them monday and installed them last night. Awesome service. I tried .047, .033 and .022 orange drops, just to hear the tonal difference. The .022's definitely sounded the best. To my ears the .047's and the .033's squeezed the tone too much and were more trebly. There was a huge difference with the cts 500k pots instead of the the gibson stock pots. Bass and treble seem clearer, louder, more articulate and balanced . Probably the biggest change I noticed was how much better the volume controlls work, especially the neck pickup. It's actually usable now. It used to be way muddy sounding even rolled off. The tone problem hasn't been solved completely, new pickups are definitely the next change.

Jeff

daniel · Post by **daniel** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 5:16 pm

So here's an update. I took out the caps I got off ebay(beware of a certain private seller marketing .47uf caps for les pauls, the values are wrong and they are not nos from the 60's as he claims) and put in some orange drop caps I got from black rose customs. Things are much better now and my tone knobs function again. I would'd recommedn a value any higher than .022 as the tone becomes mud right about five on the tone knob. I would be curious to see what some lower values would sound like. Still highly recommend this for lp owners as it is cheap and helps the tone out a lot.