LeftyBassist.com

Wasn’t sure what forum to put this in. Have you guys ever noticed a huge difference when changing capacitors in your bass?

I just scored an American Professional II Jazz. I was expecting to end up swapping out the stock V-Mod pickups, but they sound really good. Overall, this particular bass is really bright sounding, even unplugged. Although the overall tone of the bass was really good, it could be uncontrollably bright when plugged in and any fret noise from digging in was rather piercing.

I don’t know what the value of the stock capacitor is because the printing on it was a little messed up, but I decided to try a .047 orange drop cap and it darkened the sound just enough to get rid of that piercing top end, but it also seemed to boost the overall fundamental, making the bass spring to life.

Am I experiencing a placebo effect here? I don’t really think so, but I really didn’t expect a noticeable difference.

Changing the value of the cap will DEFINITELY change your tone. Changing the brand will do nothing.

It's something worth experimenting with, although personally I never have

Yep! This is what varitones are based on, like the Tonestyler 12-position (or something) rotary switches. Can be really useful!

Cool, so maybe I’m not losing my mind.
I’ve never really A/B’d capacitors and I’ve always read that the differences are minimal, so like I said above, I wasn’t really expecting to be so pleasantly surprised.

Matt,
you're as sane as can be. Different types of caps will have different effects on tone. It's worth experimenting with. Many guitards swear by paper-in-oil caps, though I've not noticed a remarkable difference when using that type in a bass, they do make a diff in my Gibson and Gibson clone electrics. Different cap values do have a relationship to how much treble they roll off, but the math escapes me at the moment.

For passive basses, I generally use a .047, or .05- whatever I have in stock, and the results are very much like your typical P-bass, J-bass roll off. I have put higher, and lower values in instruments to compare.. and as you might imagine, the larger values produce a quicker, sharper roll off. The lower ones, a lesser roll off. But pickups, pots vary quite a bit. I've heard those Stellartone stylers. If you're not sure what caps to use- or how you want your tone affected by the tone control, those are excellent replacements for the stock tone pot.

Maybe this is assumed in this discussion, but I don't think a cap change affects the tone when the pot is wide open. As soon as you turn it, absolutely.

What finish did you get? I picked up a maple neck P in Mystic Surf Green, myself. So stoked to get a USA made maple fingerboard without ordering custom.