jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

good story, welcome

you don't ned a dedicated kick synth for analog kicks if you're willing to make a kick sound with a capable analog synth like a model D...

its just that...

too much to explain....

go o your journey.

there's so much free stuff out there now.... perhaps begin with basic msuic skills, learning them si free. There's thousands of eyars of western music theory to pick up and that's just our 12 notes... and then rhythm, there's a whole world of rhytyhm...

ableton 10 is a great choice... get a keybaord you feel comfortable trying to play, even if you're bad at it. The akai isn't much of a keybed, its small and feels unnatural. Beyond that I wouldn't invest in anything but a pair of decent monitors. Personally I like yamahas, but almost everything out there these days is pretty good.... stay away from 5" woofers and stay away from anything that's too efficient for your space. 'Dope monitors' is subjective, if they're too powerful for your space you won't hear them correctly... if the woofers are too small they won't accurately reproduce low end in ANY space even with a sub. If you buy any hardware you'll definitely need an interface that will capture it nicely, just get a focusrite. Go used on anything you possibly can, keep your costs down until you're sure you're going to stick with this. Its a rabbit hole.

cheap modern synths worth buying:

volca keys, bass, FM and kick

Behringer model d

novation bs2

monologue and minilogue

avoid:

arturia micro and mini brutes, they're fully featured, but the design sounds klangy and harsh, not a good first synth

akai timber wolf.... just don't do it, they're cheap for a reason

I've had one since it came out and I had a bunch of other analog delays... it does a lot of analog stuff really well, low noise compared to alot of the units I grew up using.

did you review it?

make submissions, wheter it be gear items, reviews or, msot importantly, sightings... but get 'em right, make your reviews informative and don't add duplicate items.

I'm always telling people not to mix on headphones (or at elast to make sure to check the mix on decent speakers, set up properly for your mix position in a treated or at least familiar sounding room) and I'm not great at explaining why. I do know why mixing solely on headphones is a questionable practice but if I were good at explaining things I would be a schoolteacher! I frequently ramble on without really making the science clear to anyone (this goes for electronics too, sorry, read a book).

I got this great article in my email today from one of the many websites that spams me.. usually I don't even look at this stuff, but this is pure gold. Amateur producers read this and understand...

https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/production-expert-1/2019/3/5/not-many-audio-professionals-know-this-fact-about-mixing-on-headphones

its a popular trick... metal guys are also known to sue the HM2 the same way... hair abnds liked the SD1... they're all doing a simialr thing with the gian down but with different midrange emphasis from the rest of the circuit. You can do it with a frickin' dynacomp with the compression set all the way down or close to it.... I always liked that the dyncaomp does the bass tighten thing, gives comrpession, sends a low imepdance AND it doesn't add any non amp dirt. I sued to use a dynacomp a lot as a toenshaper and buffer in front of gunned up amps when recording, a litle comrpession and boost for elads, no comrepssion for rhythm, set the output to be about at unity when you disengage. Bang. Works really well with vitnage amps but I've used it on other guys when recording bands who were on the more metal end of the spectrum. Damn, I gave away my secret studio pedal. THe klon with the gian at zero is another variation on this theme, tis your true bypass tone with a little less thump and a low output impedance. I feelc ertain I read an article with bill Finnegan where he said the whole design was based around trying to perfect that 'tubescremer with the gain down' trick as well as provide a distortion thatw as 'your sound only more of it'.... he nailed part1. So a soul food is another good, cheap option for this since it will have zero dirt at zero gain but it gives you the other parts of the equation, a healthy amount of boost if you want to hit the amp hard and some decent overdrive to boot

On the toehr hand live I don't want anything coloring my signal if the amp is providing sufficient tone and dirt, although i've experimented with a lot I always come back to getting the sound form the amp, whether its a amster volume design or soemthing vintage. But in tehs tudio you might need a mroe subtle bass tightening into your dirt then the onboard EQ can provide because of where its places in teh circuit and how the bass control may be centered, doing it afterwards with high pass on the mic or desk isn't going to sound the same, although I always try that first... the ultimate extension of this trick is the eric valentine method of using a graphic EQ to hit a high gain amp in a very specific way frequency-wise.... I've read that van halen used this to mellow the top end of what he was giving his amrhsalls so that he could run the rpesence and treble all the way up for max gain and distortion without worrying about it getting brittle and ahrsh. In my oppinion no one makes a good soundinggraphic eq pedal anymore though. They're msotly noisy ith allt eh wrong center frequencies for the bands... not guitar-flattering to my ears. A good alternative is an old boss half rack, the elss bands the better, they come in 2 sizes... big graphics designed for PA sue are a no go, too much shit to mess with, tooe asy to induce phase problems in your output signal... a cool thing to do ina studio with an API desk or some API pres and graphics is to go into the DI input of the preamp and then engage a 560 graphic and shape your sound then instead of 'reamp boxing' the signal to raise the impedance back up just send a low impedance signal from an FX send (or the output of the API lunchbox) right into the guitar amp.You may need to fiddle with cable adapters or a ground lift since studio gear sends a balanced signal, but hey, this has worked for me. Even a 550 semi aprametric is good here, though tis more of a post-recording EQ and a great one too...

anyway, I still have no idea what song we're talking about LOL, don't need to know, there's only handful of secrets to this stuff...

the active circuitry is less the reason for that then the low impedance output and built in high apss fitler that takes out rumple from the wound strings before the amp (very helpful when drop tuning)... that's why metal guys who play traditional pickups often like a tubescreamer in front of their heavy gain banger amps.... there's a filter to tighten up the lows into the first gains tage and it sends a buffered low impedance signal (or any post boss design, doesn't even have to be an OD per se as long as it has an input filter and a very low impedance output). The ultra low impedance into a high impedance is a big part of the crisp top and the filtering of the low end is the low end tightening. You could get soemthign similar by building a gain banger amp with a small coupling cap on the input to shave extreme lows (most amps follow the fender model and don't have a coupling cap in the signal path until tis needed to block DC voltage from getting on the gain pot after the first stage, pots crackle if you apply DC to them, sound dirty buta ren't) and by increase the grid leak resistor on the first stage from the traditional fender 1m which won't do a lot until you get stupid big because the passive guitar pickup's impedance is already quite high... another solution would be to make the first stage a unity gain buffer before the actual amp that would utilize an entire dual triode, I would use soemthing hifilike a 12au7 or a 12dw7 (half an ax7 and half an au7 in one envelope, great tube), in cathode follower configuration but that would make the amp much more expensive. Dumble did soemthign similar with fets out front, that's the 'fet' switch on d style amps. ENgages a fet buffer that has some pre-gain toneshaping, a high input impedance and low output impedance.

I think you want that pluralized, there's a lot of knobs on those gain banger amps like the 5150... and it'd prolly be guitar dependent as far as the gain and tone controls go.

I guess so... and no, my 62 ac30 is a players peice.... cab is partially rebuilt after ebing damaged, its been recovered in the wrong tolex, it had a top boost module retrofitted soem time during the later 60s which i removed recently and probably won't put abck on... let me think, the fitler choke burned up during a catastrophic failure a few eyars ago and tis been repalced with a emrcury magnetics Haddon clone... the original 62 blue speakers were long gone when I purchased it 15 years ago although I own a pair of suitable replacements from a few eyars alter (I keepa reissue and an H30 in it lately, old speakers shouldn't be pushed hard), and there's a ahndful of signal caps that have been rplaced.... also, there's a bright cap on the brilliant channel volume pot that may be non-original, its not part of this era's service schematic, it came later.... I suspect it was added at the same time as the top boost module form the abck, whenever the hell that was. But it LOOKS pristine at a glance LOL

but my point is, the momene soemthing is leaves the music store it ebcomes subjective int erms of value. VOxes like mine trade for reasonable prices in europe compared to the USA (even factoring in exchange rates) ebcause they're more abundant whereas fenders are like gold over there, even recent production ones command enormouse resale prices assumign the mdoel is no longer made or ahs changed spec in some way... you cna't blanket value used gear of any type because its value is regional... hence SUBJECTIVE. And if you mean isnurance puproses? I couldn't insure my ac30. I eman, tis insured at a value of I think 3 grand if there's a fire in my home, but that couldn't ever reeplace MY particular ac30.I could get another 62 in player-shape for about that money but it wouldn't be MINEwith all tis aprticular quirks. Anything that's worth less than 4 figures that might have a mroe clear cut value? A homeowners or renters policy will likely not be terribly interested in. Small ticket items like that are part of teh overall payout if your houe burns down. Its the fancy shit like diamond rings, gibson custom historic 335s and vintage voxes you need to insure.

I take the OPs point, i just feel like you cna't accurately track a blanket marrket value of anything that's worth appraising like this.

value is a subjective term, particularly in musical instruments

what's the value of my '62 ac30? Its been recovered, has a replaced choke.... but what's its value? to me priceless. If my house burned down I could not find another old amp I love so well

maybe you could use a comrpessor, but really,, just working on your pick control would be a solid idea if you want to even out your dynamics.... technique is what you need there, with a flatpick there's no excuse…. or maybe you don't like the attack and decay of your amplifier. A compressor can be used to adjust that volume envelope before the amp, sure, but if you want fine control of it most affordable guitar comrpessors don't offer it.

and speaking of amplifiers go take your pedal budget and get a real amp already. Pathfidner's cute, and not trrible on the ears for a late 60s solid state design, but Its for bedroom use... go get a real amplifier, then worry about pedals. Keep the pathfidner of course, it might serve you well in the studio and in your bedroom. If you like the vox voicing just go buy a used ac30HW2x.... also, this amp will take care of your need for compression as it has a nice comrepssed quality from clean to mean, expecially with the celection blue speakers. But not too comrpessed, nice fast attack too... unforgiving until you have it overdriving.

if you're not going tog et serious about amplification I guess you could give compression a shot... you should probably read about it before deciding what to invest in. Understand the history and workings of compression and how it wound up as a guitar effect when it began as a studio and broadcast effect... decide if the classic mxr/ross type is good for you (90% of stompbox comrpessors are based on this) or wether you wanna look into something that does a dumbed down studio design in a pedal.

do you play with your fingers through a fender blackface amp set really clean?

Can we see pics of this bad boy?

brought it home to track down a cold solder joint and to tweak the gain staging one more time

https://imgur.com/a/w5LTOtX

not oretty, built on one of my traynor YVM PA heads, but pretty much gutted and rebuilt from scratch. I think I kept the traynor bias supply for the power tubes and that's it. The rest of the pwoer supply is completely redesigned and of course the preamp is from scratch. This amp ahd the right amount of tubes and very robust powere transformer and choke that can supply them without any trouble... and the ouput transformer is this ancient hammond BEST although a producton version will probably use a partridge output which is about the only upgrade you could make from what's in the prototype.

do you need a compressor pedal? short answer: no

ok thats handy, thanks ill have a look at a little multi-effects things

modelled comrpessors tend to be quite good too, they really have all but the most esoteric studio units down cold now

but seriously play the guitar, use the controls and your hands, you won't need so many effects.... all those redundant stomps are just causing the guitar to play YOU

I don't think you really know what a comrpessor does if that's how you're using it. You could get the same ffect with a boost pedL OR YOUR GUITAR VOLUME

a compressor's gain control is a little more like micromanaging things, its evening out the level of each note and also the overall volume envelope of each note. Like what on a synth would be ADSR? This is why country guys who d hammer claw picking really dig compressors for their chickin' pickin' runs, evens out the level and also the tonality of pick versus the figners.

here's another tip, any flat out rock distortion meant to sound like a marshall or bassman will become bluesy if you switch to the neck pickup and roll you volume back to about 7 or 8 more or les like playing through an amp (unless its a shitty epdal design). Unless you're going for SRV brasy strat and tubescreamer blues, in which case, you got me dude, not sure why anyone apes that sound, its done to death.

I'm not trying to give you a hard time but if yu're not doing a sideman gig where the artist wants you to reproduce every album tone and you're not in a sea shore cover band where people want it to sound like the radio with different signers? then you don't need all those distortions and you probably don't need reverb AND delay.... you probably don't NEED a comrepssor… and you probably only need 1 type of modulation, if that... a wah pedal can do double duty as a faux modulation device when rocked really fast in time to the song to produce a tremmy, univibey pulse for instance

another thing to think about is that you have a line6 modelling delay and a TC digital reverb, if you got one compact unit by either company that does reverb and delay it would save hassle. If you're not using them at the same time you could go super small like an M5

if you NEED all those gadgets how's your technique? you need multiple ODs and a distortion? I mean, a comp is cool if you're fingerpicking as well as well as flatpicking but if not, you can't control your dynamics? go shed

even the chinese gretsches tend to have better QC than the euivalent epiphones… and the cheaper gretsches also tend to have gibsony humbuckers, hotter and fatter than a legit 'pro' series Gretsch or vintage example, which for me is a deal rbeaker, but for many it'll be more desirable if you wanna play more modern rock on your Gretsch. All in all I've seldom played a bad gretsch at ANY price point made since 2000. I had a Japanese pro series duo jet RI for a while and it was incredibly well made and quite a player. I only got rid of it because the dynasonics picked up too much hum and smart phone chatter for stage work and all I was doing was playing live at the time. I cannot recommend a Gretsch highly enough. The new epi ES335s and 9s are pretty hit or miss as far as the playability (even when set up well, as you observed the fingerboards aren't done right) and sound and many of thema re in need of a fret dress right off the shelf. But just go play both models, a few exampls of the epi since they're not as consistent as the streamliner will be. Let your ears and hands decide.

You're going to need to change the pots on the gibby too if you want it to sound the way seth lover and ted mcarty intended, they're likely 350k pots and should be 500k.... even Gibson USA models suffer from this. I don't know why they do it but they do.

my actual recommendation is to put the guitar on hold, sell the bugera and ivest in a quality amplifier. Even another 5 watt single ended one will do as long as its well made with quality components like an old champ or an ac4HW

do you really need so many pedals you have to get a custom made board?

I like iea 1, sell some pedals and do more with less. You're not getting too much smaller than a PTjr unless you go my route lately and abandon all effects but a wah wah, Cream style. I'm not even bothering with my polytune lately.

well here's the run down, stock silicon diodes? most pedals use them, they have a resonable voltage drop and a nice crunchy sound. Germanium? they have a lot of voltage drop which will lower the output of the gain circuit forcing the recovery circuit to do more work so you will have less output at a given volume in realtion to your gain control then stock and the total output will be a bit lwoer even with both knobs dimed. They have a smooth sound though and have been very popular over the eyars. They're the sound of the mxr dist+ versus the DOD OD250 which is the same design with silicon. The klon also uses 'secret sauce' germanium diodes but I don't know how much of the klon sound is the NOS diodes and how much is the unique way they're implemented. Also, any pedal with assymetrical clipping will use a germanium diode with the silicon, led, mosfet or whatever on one side to make the clipping threshold different on one side of the wave form. So theat's the SD1, msot every fulltone epdal including the OCD... okay then there's LEDs, these are less used these days but red LEDs were the clipping in the rockman stuff by tom shuolz of Boston, its got a sound. Then there's mosfets. Mosfets are not diodes, but if you only wire up 2 legs they will behave as diodes. Fulltone favors these. I think its more of a marketing ploy so he can put 'mosfet' on a pedal that actually just gets its gain from chips. In the case of the OCD the extra germanium diode on one side and the uniqueway the diodes are implemented really impact the sound more than the choice of mosfets as diodes. But hey, Mike Fuller loves mosfets.

If you're good at sodlering and unsoldering you could just take the mini mouse kit and get some extra diodes of each type and try them all and then keep the ones you like the best.

You could also omit the diodes for 'clean mode' where you willg et a lofi boost until you have the gain high enough for the first stage of the 308 to clip the seecond stage. This will also make the epdal insanely loud with more than enough output to bludgeon a tube amp's first tube into total breakup. Think LPB1 with a tone control.

oh awesome. thanks man, this is perfect.

the lil mouse is cheap as hell, you couldn't source the aprts yourself cheaper and you would damned lucky tog et an older rat that you wouldn't wanna mod for that cheap. Even with a painted enclosure, cheap cheap cheap... and the pedal is such a simple build

https://buildyourownclone.com/products/mouse

its apparently the Mouse... maybe GGG's kit is the Rodent.... but it has the 3 diode switch from teh deucetone ;-) they also make a little kit that's just stock rat tone, no battery option: https://buildyourownclone.com/collections/distortion/products/lil-mouse-kit

there's not a learning curve on guitar control wiring, if you can't follow a schematic, let alone some of the simplified diagrams available on the internet you probably have a learning disability. There's pretty much zero knowledge required to wire up a couple pickups, a switch and some controls. If you have a bunch of switches brian may style Ic an see screwing up. You reverse 2 leads in the wrong spot and the on offs will function oddly. but nay standard wiring is pretty self explanatory and even abd soldering willt end to work.

Why don't you go on byoc's site and just get a rat kit, I think they call it the rodent.

as long as you're fast enough not to burn out a pot you can do a bass... put a little flux on the back of the pot when you round it. Get electrical flux, don't use plummer's flux. The stuff for plumming works but its acidic and it slowly eats through your wire. If you can't wire up an isnturment then you should playa coustic. Its really easy.

while looking for a gut shot and schematic of the deucetone a second ago I discovered this beauty:

http://www.effectsdatabase.com/model/proco/rat/juggernaut

bass voiced rat, parallel effects loop, gut pic appears to be LM308 chip... can't quite read it though

the deucetone apparently does not use the 308 (assuming itnernet scuttlebutt is correct, no one ever seems to publish a schematic of take a clear shot of the PCB) but I really don't think it would be hard to switch chips. assuming the IC they used has 6 legs, it should drop right in. You may have to do a little unsoldering and resoldering. That's it. In a decetone I would keep one side stock. If it were me I would go to a big box store like GC with a screwdriver in my pocket and ask to try a deucetone, then open it up once they handed it to me. See what chip is in there, write the info down to make sure the legs are the same as a 308, see if its socketed or soldered to the PCB... why not have 2 different chips in a 2 headed rat?

if the chips are socketed you can probably yank the chips out of the deucetone and replace them with LM308s assuming they aren't 308s already... Its pretty likely they chose an IC with the same pin out as the 308 if they didn't use a 308. 308s really don't cost anything, man. You could get a whole box of them for the cost of a rat.

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Texas-Instruments/LM358P?qs=X1HXWTtiZ0QtOTT8%252bVnsyw%3D%3D&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI4aHQyu244AIVgkOGCh3klgu4EAQYASABEgINGvD_BwE

its just the diodes, like I said... one will be the normal diodes, another will be germanium or LEDs, the clean is no diodes, just the sound of the opamp's crappy slew rate

yes, bt in reality? no! I know a lot of guys who use their endorsed ear as stage dummies and then use what they like off stage

I've not looked inside a deucetone, but I can guess that one side is a classic rat and the other has a different chip and different type of diodes, probably LEDs

lemmee tell ya a little story 'bout a man named Chip!

people talk a lot of op-amp smack (because they don't understand what these circuits are ACTUALLY doing), but the fact of the matter is that the difference is subtle... the main thing with the 308 is that its a really shitty old device from teh birth of integrated circuits that has AWFUL audio performance, so the rat is really taking advantage of its poor bandwidth and piss poor slew rate. A rat with a better chip will sound a skidge different at lower gain settings, but still good. I beleive the turbo rat uses a more modern chip that's actually designed for audio but the turbo rat and dirty rat clip a lot more and way earlier so you aren't 'hearing' the chip... it just doesn't matter in these revised circuits. Personally what I lvoe about the rat is that it makes a surprisingly nice OD or dirty boost with gain turned down and in that situation you're not eharing the diodes, just the chip, unelss you dig in real hard. I would say that the original rat is the only IC-opamp based pedal where the choice of chip impacts the tone. People talk a lot but this is the one.... thing is, you ay not like the chip's tone, its a sound, but a more modern, hifi opamp is also a good sound in this circuit, tis just a less less 'ratty' at low gain. FOr abss I would venture that the LM308 is probably not a great choice, its going to smear your low end. Inf act, if Iw ere doing a bass rat I would use a very hifi burr brown opamp and I would take out a good deal of the high apss filtering and maybe add a midrange notch into the circuit with a 2 pole RC filter.

Anyway, what you're hearing at any gain level above like 2 ona rat is the diodes and those are the same in all the rats as far as I know. In fact, even if they're not? one silicon diode is just like another, man. THey clip the same way at the same forward voltage. CHange materials to germanium or to LEDs? that's another story... but any back to abck pair of solicon diodes tog round will do rpetty much the sameshit, man. In my opinion you are eharing what people are telling you to hear... its a rgeat way to sell a rat with a 308, onne of the cheapest chips out there, for inflated prices. Based on parts cost an LM308 rat should cost LESS than one with a more modern opamp designed purely for audio use.

that's my .02... that said, my actual rat is a late 80s or early 90s one with a 308.... but that's only because I think I bought it in the 90s and that's what was available used for cheap when I wanted one. I have never once worried about what opamp was in there or in my tubescreamer. If Iw ere designing a mic pre I would care, for a pedal that's lopping off the signal with diodes? Mountains.... molehills...

We could mod this design to do bass really easily... I could literally double the size of a capacitor and remove another capacitor from the tone circuit that limits the really low lows and it'd have a pile more bass... if you want a cleaner sound (this amp breaks up between 3 and 4 by design, tis like a gained up early hiwatt) I could change a few values in the tone controlsand move them to another part of the preamp too, hen at your discretion you can use lower gain tubes in the phase inverter slot, a 12at7 will sound really good ther and give the power amp more headroom... for a bass amp I wuld probably beef up the pwoer supply, use a giant output tranformer and go from 2 el34s to 4 kt88s for 200 watts if you intend to use it on any decently sized stages.

I can also take part of thsi design and make you a rackmountable bass preamp with a low impedance output to drive any power amp you want.

either that or I'll start with a clean sheet of paper and design you something but you gotta tell me what you want. I like british amps, but if you like soemthign else I can listen to your ideas

brace yerself… the prototype is HIDEOUS, its a converted traynor PA head (I started modding one of mine and then just gutted it and rebuilt it my way) ... the wiring inside isn't even that tidy, the whole thing is a bit embrassing but tis a 1st draft... its actually a miracle it doesn't hum and squeal LOL a better thought out and built version should be admirably low o hum and stray abckground noise.

its actualy at my band's rehearsal space right now so next time I'm down there to work on tunes I'll take pics. I'm planning to make a video going through the limited feature set too, hopefully that will help me wring some money out of people so I don't have to finance my amp business dream by taking food out of my kid's mouth. But I don't have anyone to babysit this week so The Lux took the week off from jamming... probably next week we'll get back ina ction. Oh yeah, I started a new band with my odlest friend. That idea kidna prompted me to design an amp because he asked me not to use ac30s and I wasn't happy with my EL34 heads for this so... there ya go

done

I'm seriously thinking of starting a kickstarter to generate funding tos ee if I can do an affordable version of this design. I would still do handmade ones to order for 2 or 3 grand, but I'm imagining a PCB version with minimal handwiring and less costly (but still good) transofrmers custom specced. to have runs of faceplates, PCBs and transformers done up I would need startup capital I don't have.... a big roder of cabinets and chassis will cut costs too so kickstarter. Now does anyone know how to generate a ton of kickstarter interest?

man, user generated content is what makes this site a mess... its cool in theory, but in theory communism works

a ccocked wah is a bandpass, it actually eliminates frequencies at the outer edges of the filter and reduces everything that passes but the center frequency...

a notch or bad stop filter is the opposite, it removes the center frequency and reduces the frequency around it. However, if you reverse a notch with active circuitry you get a peaking filter which is exactly what you would think; the center freuency is boosted a lot and all teh surrounding frequencies come up a bit, everything else is uanffected, ie has the same gain as before.

Bandpass and band stop fitlers can eb passive, a peaking fitler cannot sicne you have to reverse and boost up a band stop to make it... at the same time you might as well keep the ability to band stop and thats what midrange EQ is. Its an active fitler that does band stop or peaking, that's it. That's what the mid bands on a graphic are, they ahve fixed width (Q) so they overlap in an intelligent and useful way... anyway

I suspect the PDF-2 is pretty similar to teh ld ibanez 'parametric ' pedals and is also probably related to the Ibanez circuit (which is pretty simialr to msot 'sweepable' midrange EQs on little mixers), they just added a width control, soemthing that you really want in this type of fitler. I coudl go into which analog fitlers 'self adjust' their width in a msuical way and why and also why you won't see that in a pedal versus an expensive studio EQ... but that's way beyond the scope of this question...

I think the cocked wah thing may be cool, it worked for Mick Ronson but I don't think its what the OP is askign about... the sotne deaf seems like an old ibanez EQ with dirt built in and that may be just the ticket, although if he's letting the amplifier produce a lot of the distortion he might be setting the gain really low to maintain some clarity

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.

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