What Sounds Best? Guitar Tone Capacitors - Cheap Vs Expensive 

I am happy I revisited this test! One of the hardest things was finding 5 capacitors with all the same value, they can be all over the place due to different tolerance variations...that's why I like Orange Drops + they look cool 😎

So.. its all hype . Caps are caps. Thanks mate

I LOVE these well executed tests. They confirm so much that so many refuse to believe. I get that guitary things are often very personal but at least start with the fundamental understanding of what's true. Then if you want a $30 cap by all means have at it. It's a great story of magic and wizardry tell your friends, but at least know it's that, a story. Thank you.

It looks like the only real question we should be asking, as guitarists is, what design is the most reliable and long-lived?

I’ve watched a few videos like this and every time I think I hear a difference and pay attention to that capacitor I realize that it is really the player having a slightly heavier or lighter touch on the strings. You certainly had the best setup for the test compared to the other videos I’ve watched.

The 30 cent poly are my go-to for cost and reliability. The ceramics CAN become more microphonic over many, many years, and the others aren’t worth the money in my opinion. You do bring up a good point on the variance in tolerances though, but it’s not too hard to test the values. What people don’t realize about the old school “bumble bee” or paper-in-oil ones is they do degrade over the years, and that’s the illusion people get when they pick up a Les Paul from the 60s, hear a tonal difference between that and a newer guitar, and say, “it must be this out-dated type of capacitor that makes the tone amazing!” Yes, and no. If you have a 60+ year old capacitor lying around, yeah, it might give you a similar sound. If you use a brand new “new-old stock” capacitor, it won’t sound like that 60s guitar unless you wait another 60 years. Save your money, use a poly.

Cap type doesn’t matter. It would be interesting to see hear the difference between values. Like compare 22 to 47.

"I thought there should be way more difference there..." But WHAT difference are you looking for? "More good"? Really the most we can hope for is "closest to the cap's spec". We're just as well off comparing two "identical" capacitors and trying to hear the tolerance difference. It's math, not magic. This is a worthwhile experiment, though. "Closest to spec" isn't necessarily what's best, either! Our ear is the final arbiter of which one is "best" for a particular guitar, so a switcher rig like yours would definitely be a useful tool to "tune" a tone knob to the customer's taste. 👍

You are doing valuable work that no one else seems to be bothered doing!

I'm 62 and I've played for 48 years - I've learned that everything I ever 'knew' about guitars is BS - tonewood, US made, pickup upgrades, Gibson, pot upgrades etc etc etc - all BS . The EQ on an amp and a boost pedal has infinitely more effect on the sound than all of them put together

This demonstrates that they all sound identical of the values are close to one another No magic capacitors despite what manufacturers imply Kinda like electric guitar tonewood

Great test! Keep in mind that capacitors have a tolerance, so the value can vary between them. Usually it is about 10-20% max in modern caps; old types can vary up to 50%. So 22nF can vary from 17.6 to 24.2, oldies from 11 to 33. That is something you can hear. I use standard cheap poly caps and check the value beforehand. Constant quality guaranteed for little money!

It's crazy spending the money on caps rated at 400V+ for a guitar that produces millivolts. I use higher quality caps for amps more for stability and reliability than for any tone differences. The reliability thing in amps is very important because a failed component can kill something expensive down the line, a failed cap in a guitar is about 5 minutes to replace and not a chance of damaging anything.

As I've always understood it, the signal from the pickups itself doesn't actually go through that capacitor - it merely "drains" the higher frequencies to ground. And in that sense, purely from an electronic point of view, it won't make the least bit of difference what type cap you put in. Obviously that approach completely disregards tolerances, but if you measure specific caps against eachother, and put the most and the least expensive with the same value together, you won't be able to audibly notice the difference.... That said, personally I'm usually going with the 'orange drop' ones. But mostly because they're fairly big and therefor less fiddly to solder 🤣🤣

The only reason you need anything other than ceramic is if your cavity cover is clear.

I read that the entire reason Gibson selected the Orange drop caps is because at the time there were complaints that the tone varied so much from one guitar of the same model to the next. The orange caps are high quality and the variance in actual value from cap to cap is very small, i.e. they're more consistent. Along that line, I bought an assortment of Poly Film caps with 5% tolerance. Far, far, far less expensive than orange caps. Just experiment and find a value that you like for that guitar, and if you never use the tone control, don't worry about it.

Try 250k / 300k / 1MEG pots also different tapers of different vendors. Possibly Different values of capacitors .01uF / .033uF / .047uF/ .1uF - Love the setup and clear audio quality.

The cheaper ones had the most impact on the sound.

Do you know of any experiments of mounting humbuckers or single coils direct to the guitar body o f course allowing for proper pickup height ? If not that might be interesting. Thanks

They all make a difference, but I cannot hear it on clean. Only on high gain, tight riffs/tones. I have a video on comparing Ibanez green standard caps, poly I think vs Vitamin T cap and there is a major major difference. What I prefer depends on the guitar wood: on Mahogany guitars I prefer bumblebees, on alder guitars oil caps. For clean sound I prefer orange drops, but I never play clean....so...

I suck at electronics but, I always thought the tone pot is just bleeding sound to ground. The tone cap affects that but as the tone gets darker its much harder to hear any difference. With the tone at 10 there isn't really any cap involved.

If you understand how caps work you'll understand why you don't hear a difference. What matters is it's value not it's type. Any difference you hear comes from variations in value. 2, 10% caps of the same value can be 20% different that you'll hear. There's as much nonsense in guitar stuff as hi end audio. Lots of expensive stuff sold by placebo. And especially in a guitar it's just bleeding off highs.

Paper in oil caps tend to lose their propriety over time, and become a resistor. BTW, you can use Illinois pp capacitors for more than half the prices of the orange drop and sozo blue. The only thing I don't put ceramic caps in the audio path, and as electronic technician with 40 years of experience, I don't argue with people anymore, it doesn't make a difference. Especially in guitar. As long as they're the right value, it's ok. There's so many stories, mumbo jumbo about particular parts, but it's the circuit desing that makes it sounds good, not particular components, I rebuilt and restore audio equipment, very high end stuff, and most of the times, the difference is the circuit itself, and the choice of higher tolerance components. But a particular type of capacitor won't change the sound enough for anyone to notice. I'm happy to see more people are starting to notice it. Sorry for the bad English, I'm not a native english speaker.

No difference to my ears.

Thanks for taking the time to demo the various types. I found that the Orange drops work well on a Strat neck(.047uf) and it feels nicer to play? I usually find stuff at the re-cycling centre and snip out TV and Radio bits ,I found a load of "WIMA" caps of various values and put it 2 in the middle setting on the same Strat a .001uf and a .022uf parallel and am getting a "Johnny Gtr Watson" snappy super clean sound by turning the tone down to 6. I will try any-thing . Do you think the "Voltage " rating makes a noticable difference like a 5 Volt vs a 200 Volt?

30 $ for a Bumble Bee is totally absurd... there are no tone differencies between the various types butv the much cheeper poly and orange are still good quality and you can save money enuff to go and eat a tasty pizza with your darling girl (or boy).

If the caps are good, the same value, it shouldn’t make a difference. Those who are of the same value who sound different than the others might be broken

I've had good old ones that have delivered, but I've also had amazing new cheap ones. I just gave up, and let my ears decide now.

This demonstration raises so many questions. In my mind different caps. with the same value should sound the same. Quality and longevity are a real thing ask anyone who works on tube amps. As the listening to this video goes the place where I could hear the difference in caps. was when he was switching. I would also be interested in what different values in capacitance would make ?

value yes, brand, so minutely, that no its not relevant. back in the day when quality control was quite a bit looser? perhaps. today? get a decent enough cap, but don't spend money you don't need to. a mid level brand poly foil cap from an electronics supply store in the right value for less than a buck should do you fine.

Absolutely zero difference over phone Wont be any difference heard in a mix or a band setting And certainly again you wouldnt hear a difference in a mix once the mix engineer roles of everything under 200hz What a waste of time worrying about caps is

Sounded very similar to me and I'm a "tone chaser"! 🤔

THIS VIDEO WAS ALL CAPS.

Excellent test! I've been a tech since the 70s. I've always found that poly caps were the most long term stable as long as not overheated. Otherwise my work on hifi circuits over the years told a similar story. I will be sharing this with my tone snob fiends.

Onya for doing this! Point well made & proven. I must say though, If you can't hear the differences (subtle though they are), you may need better monitors or to get your ears checked. However in a room full of punters who really cares. ☮🕊

I don't believe in magic capacitor mojo but I do know for sure the ceramic capacitors have a huge tolerance. I buy orange drops because they are the right price point for the consistency I want. But you could buy a pile of ceramic caps and test them one by one to find the actual right value and it might be cheaper and would sound the same for the same values.

guitarist often believe in magic, chumps, easy marks

What about Tantalium capacitors?

Based on my experience, the type of caps only makes a difference for AC coupling caps that have to transfer the whole frequency range of the signal. Indeed different types of caps have different frequency response (capacitance is not always constant with frequency) and thus it can play a role in coupling caps or bright caps. Caps type used in a high pass / tone filters does not make such a difference as they dump all the highs anyway..

Orange was brighter Bumblebee seemed sweet but I might be biased.Once you add a drummer and lots of volume -- you wouldn't hear much,, I'd go with the orange drop.

The orange drop sounds the most strat’ey to me and seems to emphasize a different high mid frequency range that would be great for wild blues leads. My second favorite was the Sozo which sounds great for rhythm and to me that sounded almost identical to the Poly, but I liked it slightly better. I felt like the Jupiter was the most transparent and added the least color to the sound. The ceramics literally sounded cheap. 🤯 Thank you for this experiment!

Waylon, Thanks for doing this! I found that the bigger difference between caps of the same value, is the artifacts, or absence of during the sustain and release part of the envelope. Very subtle, but you’ll hear it with some caps. I like the silver/ gold film and unicorn tears formulation. They don’t look fancy, but it’s nice to know you have a $500.00 cap in your low pass😉

Another masterpiece of a video with the magic box

Thanks for the video. Did you try running the individual signals through a scope? If so, was there noticeable differences in the waveforms?

If we want to go very deep in the theme we may take in consideration other characteristics of the capacitors as resistivity and inductance. These all contribute more or less to the shape of the frequency curves. And it's measurable, therefore audible (and not always the other way around😉). Very good test by the way. Your setup is suitable for some sweep signal measurements.

I really don't hear a difference at all between them.

To be blunt! After decades in the electronic biz you are going to notice more in tolerance differences than diferent types of cap. For my moey pot taper (log, anty-log and normal) will have more of a effect and that is only a preference of the player often ive used unconventional values with the 50c green cap and what ever pot I can get my hands on. a pot is a pot, a cap is a cap. use the right cap for the right job eg audio/radio/hf/uhf ect ect...

I believe every part in a guitar build matters, and has some impact on the tone. How much each one of those individual parts matters isn't as important as how the whole package works together. I tryn use the best parts available for all my personal guitars. If other people wanna cheap out, thats up to them. If skimping on something like a tone cap makes them happy? Rock on!

They all sound pretty much the same.

Wow, I didn't even know it was changing during the blind test! But then I could hear very subtle differences when I knew you were switching. I put an orange drop cap in my guitar awhile ago when I switched out the pots for some push-pulls to wire the pickups for series/parallel operation - never really noticed a difference in the tone, but the soldering I did was much better than the toddler who was in there before me. I've found that the best way to change your tone is to change the speaker in your amp.

Day by day, the gear snobs are losing more and more ground 😆

I didn’t really hear much of anything different on any of them except the ceramic. Sounded warmer. Even in the blind test. Could hear a change except when the ceramic was engaged.

Great comparison! No difference. If there is any difference (I don’t hear them) they are negligible.

I’ve had much the same journey with tone caps- personally i’ve found its where in the guitar circuit the cap is placed - if its before the volume pot the cap gets loaded slightly when you turn the volume down- hence some guitars sound duller when volume is decreased- wired ‘after’ the volume pot output & the tone cap works much better imho- with a subtler taper and midrange lift as the tone is lowered- basically the 50’s wiring in vintage Les Paul guitars a big part of of their mojo…

Engineer here, electrons totally do not give a s*** what capacitors are used at Guitar audio frequencies . Capacitors with more leakage will result in a warmer tone because they are shunting The High Frequency content to ground buy leaking frequencies the expensive capacitor thing is Mojo hype in the end especially when you consider most people don't even use their own controls and have them dimed all the time which effectively takes them out of the circuit other than the load from the pot

Thank you for the video. I always roll my eyes when someone says they hear different tone caps even when their tone pot is on 10. 😅 If you can compare different cap types on treble bleed mods, now that would be interesting.

The only thing that matters is the value of the capacitor and the tolerance of them. Anything else is audiophile bollox

No, there is no difference, never has been. Capacitors like resistors perform a single function in the circuit and regardless of how they are made the result is the same. It's not that they don't make enough difference to buy them, they make ZERO difference.

Same values, i hear no difference. Awesome test.

They all sound the same. The cap is just bleeding signal to ground. Curious about what difference people would expect to hear?

Congratulations on your channel, thank you for sharing your knowledge. These latest videos are proving to be very helpful in understanding how electronic components influence our guitars. Best regards.

No difference at all. Most guys use so many pedals this doesn't matter at all. Amp choice and pickups is where you'll notice tone differences. Los Angeles senior Blues player

Someone might know better, but I think PIO caps ae the least stable. Ceramic caps aren't driven to resonate at the low voltages from a guitar pickup.

I bought 2 $5 caps to qualify for free shipping from my favorite vendor so basically they were free. My usual are $5 a dozen caps.

Sounds monotonous

Choice keps bru!

Love the guitar, especially the headstock! Is that self made?

Now do a video where you have one guitar, but several different players playing the same song. Will you hear a tonal difference between styles and how people play or will it sound the same.

I came to the same conclusions not too long ago. However, mine was not an actual study or experiment but rather just working on guitars and using just about every brand and type. My results were the same. There was no real discernible difference. They just block a certain area above a certain frequency. I like the little cheap red or green poly caps you see everywhere, mainly because they're so small they make an easier fit with my push pulls and custom wiring, and pickup options. And I make sure the values are correct.

What would happen if you had no tone cap or pot at all? I'm considering that for my next build.

Very interesting! Could you do a similar test using the 5 different capacitors as a low cut instead? See if they sound any different?

Could you try running the guitar into a solid state or tube amp and see if they sound differently please? (Since this is a more real-world situation)

Any cap should sound the same, as long as they have the same value, because the signal that goes through the cap goes to ground so you never hear it. You only hear the signal that passes by the cap. I would say even microphonic caps should sound the same for the same reason, you don't hear the signal. There may be a difference if you were to pass the entire signal through the cap like they do with tube amp coupling caps, especially if the cap is microphonic.

i heard difference between then

I am glad that you ran this test with the direct sound. I have to confess that if there were differences they were way too subtle for me to hear clearly. I also strongly suspect that when you add an amp and turn up the gain a bit, it will greatly overshadow any perceived differences.

Learn to play the guitar and stop worrying about wood species, strings, capacitors, and pedals…

Thank you! I’m glad someone has common sense.

Nicely done. I couldn't hear much, but for what it's worth I think the Ceramic was always worst or worst equal, and the bumblebee was always best or best equal. I'm talking like a 1% margin between them - almost nothing. I used to use orange drops by default for several reasons - reliable, negligible cost, easy to get, consistent, reputable (an easy choice for the customer). Some customers figured $30 on a $3k guitar was negligible too, so the Mojotone and some other American PIO cap (forgotten) were common picks. My "in the room" feeling was that the differences were more apparent at volume with high harmonic content (overdriven) and dynamic playing style. Still miniscule, but the expensive guitar game is all about finding miniscule kernels of inspiration and using them to create magic.

tonly really matters when your amp is cranked to 11 and your using serious string vibratto so hang on hard core a solo note

I’ve found the biggest difference between caps is on the volume pot as you roll back the volume. Some retain more clarity than others. Pickups play a big difference in this also but all things equal, I’ve found that the old $10~15 Russian PIO caps retain more top end when rolling back the volume vs the orange drops, new production bumble bees, mojo Dijon and a couple others.

Luxe is trash, mine have gone bad in just a couple of years. Save your money!

Mostly playing P Basses requires you to be on the tone control the whole evening. They all handle a little differently, also depending on the pot value. 0.022uF seems really low for anything. For me it's 0.47uF on single coils and like 0.082 for humbuckers and basses. The most useful caps tend to be the ones with the most idiosyncratic nonlinear performance, like the p-i-o ones. Weird is good, turns out. There were some polypropylene ones out of an old combo organ that were extremely cool.

The pot was the best

No one spends $500 on vintage caps and says it doesn’t sound good. No one will admit they wasted money!

any differences that you do hear are due to variation in values between the caps, not the type. Most caps tend to have a fairly wide tolerance, and PIO, everybody's honey, is the worst because of how they're made and the fact that as the oil dries out, their values change. The value is 100% the reason for any measurable or audible differences.

They are subtle in difference, but i only hear it because im hearing it on a 1/4" phone speaker. I like 4 of the 5. Thank You SO MUCH for Sharing this Work 🙏🚂🎼🌹🎶🎵⚕️🛠~< 3)>>-Z->}

So I’m convinced caps don’t matter! Get the most reliable one

Nice video , BUT the difference is the different plucking of the guitar. It‘s impossible to pluck / play chords in exactly the same manner. So , it would be good just to measure the frequency response of the PU‘s with the different caps ….. cheers !

WAYLON, look really into how to get Claptons Cream "Woman Tone" because when I roll down my strat tone pot or Les Paul or SG tone pots it doesn't get that Cream Woman Tone. There is something else going on how to get that rolled back woman tone. I think the early 60's and late 50's gibson SG and Les Paul used 300K pots but that would even make the guitars darker tone worse than using modern 500K pots. Try to experiment a lot to make a strat tone pot rolled down get that Clapton Cream records Woman tone.

Just use the orange cap. Last longer, no difference in sound.

I completely re-did the electronics in my Japanese TELECASTER , the original layout was with just cheap crap , the pickup's were quite low output so they were very bright, mini pots and a plastic 3 way had to go ! First a set of Seymour Duncan "hot telecaster" pickup's so higher output means more mid's, Fender vintage 250*K standard size pots ! and the famous orange drop .047 capacitor ! Now the guitar absolutely kills in every way extreme tone range and very even pickup output !

first test the 1st and 2nd where bad and dark, 3 to 5 where way brighter.

What kind of humbuckers are in this guitar?

Even without testing anything, the result can be predicted: - Caps let high frequencies through. - Tone controls send these high frequencies to ground. - Caps, therefore, act on that part of the signal that *we don't actually hear*. If there's any response difference between two caps with the same nominal value, it means either there are deviations from that nominal value, either at least one cap is defective.

WHAT ABOUT A CRANKED AMP....OVERDRIVE/DISTORTION??? MIGHT BE VERY DISCERNIBLE

Check out Emerson Tone Capacitors from Oklahoma USA... This guy Mitch makes these things exactly to the spec of the original Vitamin ones of the late 50's.. $28 US

they do and will always sound the same unless the value changes.

I couldn't hear any significant differences on "clean" tones. It would be interesting to hear if there are any discernable differences on crunchy or dirty tones. Thanks

Are you trolling? Even at 10 the caps were all significantly different!

I'm not surprised, but it's great that someone shows it so people can hear and "see" it for themselves. How about making a test about "tone pots"? No, not the tone pot, the pots that people claim to improve your tone.