The Best Overdrives?

Mine was born Oct 1966 and is all-original including original tubes (seriously!), cabinet with piggyback hardware, speakers, even the thin brown speaker cable with flat right-angle plug.

I'm the third owner and the first real player-owner. The first owner barely used it and had it in storage for decades. The second owner had it in their living room as a showpiece for about 15 years and turned it on maybe a half dozen times. I know this because they're my uncle. When it came to me, I had my local amp shop inspect and validate everything. I had them replace the capacitors (which were nearing end of life or already gone) with era-correct caps. I also had them replace the head's power cable with a modern 3-prong (with ground) for safety. Finally, I had them solder a simple little RCA jumper plug so that I can activate the tremolo effect without using a footswitch (and leave it on).

I still have the original caps and power cable in a ziplock bag in case I ever pass it along ... though I have zero intention of doing so. It sounds freaking amazing.

mine didn't have original tubes, but it had the original filter caps and they were still going strong... I was all set tor epalce them but they all tested right on the money so I left them. Honestly, replacing the fitler caps with modern caps won't effect the sound one bit as long as the values are the same or damned close, even using higher voltage tolerances for longer life won't change the sound, tis just the power supply, as long as you don't underrate those caps for voltage and stick close to the capacitance on the schematic they do not effect the tone...

STAND BY FOR CAPACITOR RANT

the electrolytics on the cathodes may or may not make a difference, depends who you ask, Ic an't ehar anything. Wisdom is to use electrolytic but I've used ceramic discs here without any issues assuming they're a type with the same tolerance as an electrolytic. You usually get 200v rating on most ceramic discs which is like 20 times your negative bais voltage. Its only 5 to 10 volts they need to handle linearly. And its not like elctrolytics have good linearity or distortion chracteristics when pushed ahrd, but you see old, off brand tube amps with like 5v caps on the cathodes of the preamp tubes all the time and they're fine. The coupling caps though, its hard to get a modern equivalent for those astron capacitors. There's defintiely some evidence that the type of caps used in thsoe spots effect the distortion character ebcause different cap dialectrics have different distortion characteristics when you're nearing their voltage rating,t hat said, if ir ecall Fender tended to really overrate the signal caps so the benefit of getting NOS astrons is debatable. You wouldn't use high votlage ceramic caps, the toelrances are wonky but the difference between any polyester film or even metalized polyester caps may be in the ear of the beholder... although silver mica or polystyrene will probably give the amp a mroe linear behavior as you push it. Ia ctually really like polystyrene signal caps in some of these spots when i'm building stuff. You just have to be really careful not to melt them. On using vintage correct cap types/brands, I'm trying to ehar the difference but I only think I ehar it when I've got like a 200v or 250v polyester cap taking like 180v of gain from a stage. I think fender specifies like 400v caps throughout so pretty much anything at that rating will perform the same with the amount of signal voltage that a blackface passes.

On my own amp design the prototype used a bunch of 200v Phillips msutard caps I ahd around in some of thsoe spots and when i tried 250v Mallory 150s even though they're ostensibly the samedialetric they didn't perform precisely the same. I wound up doing a mix of different old nd new caps by ear... but I defintiely did ear testing of modern and vintage 400 to 450v polyester caps, Mullards and Phillips versus mallories and even some tropical fish caps and stuff and I can't hear the difference when the caps are all so far below their voltage rating... and I have good ears. The lower voltage vintage caps defintiely gave my prototype a bit mroe grit but I think the amp would sound fine with all 450v modern caps too, the odl stuff just suits my purposes for my personal 50 watt amp. I also used high voltage modern ceramics for little values anywhere you ould normally use mica ecept for a few spots where I didn't have the value Iw anted where I sued some old eerie caps that I THINK are micas but may not be.

In closing, this is pretty subtle stuff. Nothing to sweat if its an amp you are planning on keeping. Colelctors like them to look original though. Much is made of the mystic properties of old polyester caps or paper in oil caps. My conclusion is that while there is some science behind it, in all but the msot critical applications its inaudible. If its a fender where they overspec everything? meh, its not that improtant tonally, try to match the dialectric but even that is not so important. I think a lot of these myths coem from amrshall guys where a lot of marshals of the classic era sued whatever they could get their ahnds on so they went with the lwoest safe voltage rting in any given spot the mustard caps get sammed and their nonlinearity becomes a part of teh tone. Switch to a mallory 150 and it might change the tone a bit, plus modern caps aren't in 200, 300, 400v rating now, we're like 250, 350, 450v so the caps got more 'headroom' then the mustard cap woulda had... anyway, just my .02

Subtle, agreed. I have noticed differences in electric guitar caps though (inside the body cavity, on tone pots). There are at least two camps here in Atlanta - the sprague orange lovers and the oil-and-paper lovers.

people say that about tone caps, I really think its snake oil... your guitar doesn't even pass 1 full volt peak tp peak.... any of the caps you're putting in there are rated at 200v or more. at 1v peak to peak the dalectrics have the exact same behavior on an oscilliscope. I can't hear it either.

I tend to put 250v mallory 150s in my guitar cavities because i always have them around. I've yried hovland musicaps, sprague orange drops, russian paper in oil caps, hifi polystyrene caps, you name it... I really can't blind test a tone knob with a ceramic disc versus any of the more expensive options. I can blind test a shitty potentiometer and Ic an blind test 50s gibson wiring versus modern wiring. A lot of times when giuys change the tone caps they change the potentiometers and wirign style at the same time and assume its the fancy part when inr eality their pots have the correct value, a better lof taper and the wiring is less 'lossy' 50s style versus the more common method with the tone cap to ground. I'm not saying that's your experience, but if you changed all the coponents when you changed caps? don't assume the caps are the big thing you're hearing. THe other thing is if you're replacing a loose tolerance Z type ceramic disc with a 5 to 10% tolerance sprague or PIO? well the old cap may have been up to 80% off value whereas the one you just put in is rpetty mch spot on. When I'm comparing cermic caps I'm using tight tolerances, at least the 10%+/- that my usual mallories are. I've pulled caps out of fenders thata re Z5U types +80%/-20%. that's going to make a difference when the value coulda been up to 80% too high or if you're lucky its just 20% too low!

Anyway, I still tend to use mallory 150s, at 250v. They're smaller than orange drps and they're my preferred amp repair/construction polyeter cap so It end to have bags of them in .022uf and .047uf sicne those are really common coupling cap valuesin amps.