Outside of Tolerance on Bumblebees

[frets]

Guys,
I’ve got a baggie full of 22nF 50’s PIO Bumble Bees that measure 27nF Like 50 of them. What should I do with these things. They’re 2nF outside of tolerance; and, overall 5nF away from their original values 65 years ago. Listening to a .022 and .027, well I bet a lot of us could not tell the difference. I’m tempted to build harnesses with them. What would you do?

[sumgai]

^^^ Considering your clientele, it seems safe to quote from Field Of Dreams: "If you build it, they will come".

(Those who choose to look for it will see what I did there. )

HTH





sumgai

[blademaster2]

Those are not terribly far out of tolerance for capacitors, and I would be astonished if anyone could hear a difference in a guitar circuit.

If it was me, I would use them without hesitation.

Some types of dielectric materials do change their properties over time (I have seen ceramic capacitors become far out of tolerance, but they were brought back into tolerance by heating the parts in an oven up to the curie temperature of the dielectric).

[thetragichero]

two things you'll run into with salvaged caps: out of tolerance and leaking dc. leaky doesn't really apply in an ac circuit like inside a guitar (but can make an amp sound like a motor boat). out of spec i just use em as they measure
i bet a double blind test of someone with ears gilded enough to "hear" a 5nf difference in a passive tone control cap would show it's all in their head

[frets]

I appreciate it guys, I hope to hear from more.
BTW - I would tell them that their was a variance. And let them hear a .022 bee vs. a .027 bee. By using the .027’s, I can give guys better deals on my 50’s harnesses and 50’s Jimmy Page. I don’t want to rip anybody off.

The snobby guitar guys get real inflexible about cap values, I don’t think they know they can’t hear a difference but if Guitar World and Guitar Premiere told them to use .022, then it’s .022 on the dot they want. The .022 exact bee harnesses are therefore priced accordingly. Ha!

[newey]

Aug 4, 2020 10:58:18 GMT -5 thetragichero said:

i bet a double blind test of someone with ears gilded enough to "hear" a 5nf difference in a passive tone control cap would show it's all in their head

I won't claim to have the most discerning ears (too many years standing next to big speaker cabs), but I have tested a 22nf cap versus a 33nf (same guitar, same pickups, etc.) and couldn't tell the difference. With a 47nf, I can.

[JohnH]

I'd say use 'em. But do a resistance test and discard any that are actually leaky. I don't know what would be a fair criterion for that but if a few were less than say 2M ohms, id not want them in my guitar.

Also, maths tells us that unless you turn a tone pot down below about half way, the cap value makes somewhere between zero and negligible difference, the action is dominated by the pot. But don't tell your clients that! Id expect it would only upset them or make them annoyed.

Or, for the very 'discerning' clients who proclaim their golden hearing abilities, you could, for a reasonable $ premium, set up a testing arrangement so that they could hand pick their favorite capacitor that they love the tone of the most.

[newey]

Aug 4, 2020 16:31:49 GMT -5 JohnH said:

Or, for the very 'discerning' clients who proclaim their golden hearing abilities, you could, for a reasonable $ premium, set up a testing arrangement so that they could hand pick their favorite capacitor that they love the tone of the most.

Or just remove any markings from the caps, maybe spray-paint them some Day-Glo color, and tell clients they are your own custom-made, top-secret, special sauce-ish type of cap, unobtainable anywhere else. Then double the price.

[sumgai]

^^^ THIS!


Building on that.... You had these custom made to order for the 'discerning' client who really can't make up his mind which of those two values he wants, 0.022 or 0.033.... tell him: "Here ya go, I've got the solution to your quandary right here.  This is the best of both worlds, so you'll never have to worry over having chosen the wrong value."

HTH





sumgai

[thetragichero]

to be honest i often have a hard time telling red from orange on these anyway
so these are red-orange red-orange for the first two stripes. (2.5 + .25) * multiplier band = 27.5nF. right on spec!

[Yogi B]

Aug 5, 2020 6:26:55 GMT -5 newey said:

Or just remove any markings from the caps, maybe spray-paint them some Day-Glo color, and tell clients they are your own custom-made, top-secret, special sauce-ish type of cap, unobtainable anywhere else. Then double the price.

I think this is the first time I've every heard someone suggesting to disguise a genuine bumblebee as some other capacitor -- just because people have managed to make a quick buck doing the opposite, doesn't mean you'll get as many biters this way around.

---

Speaking of opposites, CreamTone offer vintage drifted capacitors as an option with their wiring harnesses, i.e. caps that, when new, were a different value and labelled accordingly, but have now drifted into the 'correct' 22nF tolerance.

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Other potential ideas on how to market these as a feature:

• Would an owner of an untouched original '50s Gibson pull it's caps because they'd drifted? I'd highly doubt it! So, by using drifted caps, your just being more authentic to these holy-grail guitars.
• Old pickups that have somehow mysteriously partially degaussed over time are apparently a secret to true vintage tone, even though by definition that would mean, when new, they were once more fully charged than now, so that should be the vintage tone. If that flawed logic applies to pickups, then why not capacitors too?
• Source some other caps with a value of 120nF (maybe Mullard "tropical fish" or "mustard") and wire them in series with your 27nF caps, twice the caps means twice the mojo, right?

[frets]

Hey Yogi,
Love your suggestions, the degaussing bullet is so true. Your point about a ‘59 with original caps is an excellent argument. I’ve worked on probably 10 50’s and the bees all had drifted in the mid 30 to low 40nF.

I had one guy who actually demanded that I pull the pots and the bees and substitute them with CTS and Orange Drops. I argued with him. The pots just needed to be cleaned, the bees were in the low 30’s. But he kept on about it. Some of these guys won’t listen to me because I’m a woman. They always ask to talk to my boss. There ain’t one. Anyway, I refused to do the work. He probably went to Guitar Center.

All of my 50-something Bees are 25-28nF. I’m using them, you’ve all been so helpful with this decision. I did think about placing a 100nF in series with the bee but I was thinking an smd. I’d never sell anything like that. My goal was to find if the ceramic cap changed the tone of the Bumblebee. I couldn’t tell. I have seen the creamtones. I have 100’s of 18’s that are now 21 to 22nF. Maybe I should call them. Ha!