Anyone Try a .015 neck Cap in an Archtop?

[raylinds]

Not long ago I purchased an Emerson ES-335 wiring harness from Emerson for my Epiphone B.B. King Lucille but have not yet installed it. I just got Fralin Pure PAF pickups for my recently purchased Epiphone Broadway and also want to upgrade the wiring harness. I ordered a wiring harness, but it is backordered and I am anxious to try out the Fralin's, so thought I might use the Emerson harness.

The problem is that the neck cap is .015 instead of the standard .022. My research shows this is a popular mod for Les Pauls to get the so-called Clapton "woman" tone. Supposedly it has no affect with the tone on 10, but cuts less treble when turned down. At 0, the tone is supposed to be less dark. Depending on who you believe the affect is either subtle or noticeable.

I am inclined to wait for the other harness as it seems the .022 cap give a greater tonal range, but was curious if anyone here has used a .015 in their jazz archtop.

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

As I recall, Lucille has a Varitone switch, which is a switchable tone cap. If your guitar has one, the best choice of tone cap at the pot may be different from the usual wiring. I’m not certain, since the last guitar I had with a VT was a 345 in the early 1960s - but there may not even be a single tone cap on a pot in guitars with a factory VT. Check what you have now. I assume you think the 22 is “standard” from reading but haven’t yet looked inside your guitar to see what it has.

Be careful about swapping the harness in a 3X5. It’s no piece of cake.

[raylinds]

As I recall, Lucille has a Varitone switch, which is a switchable tone cap. If your guitar has one, the best choice of tone cap at the pot may be different from the usual wiring. I’m not certain, since the last guitar I had with a VT was a 345 in the early 1960s - but there may not even be a single tone cap on a pot in guitars with a factory VT. Check what you have now. I assume you think the 22 is “standard” from reading but haven’t yet looked inside your guitar to see what it has.

Be careful about swapping the harness in a 3X5. It’s no piece of cake.

Good advice- thanks. The Lucille model has no f-holes as B.B. didn't want feedback, so there is an access plate on the back to access the electronics making it easy to work on.

[raylinds]

I just checked a schematic and the Lucille model has .022 caps on both tone controls, so I ordered a .022 bumblebee cap.

[Jimmy Mack]

Good luck! My Epi Lucille had a mess of wiring, due to stereo jacks, varitone, plus the usual V + T pots, and the wiring was THIN - making it hard to handle in that tiny access hole.

When I needed to change p/ups, I opted to swap them from the top of the guitar - just cutting the wires and leaving as much as I could to facilitate joining the new and old wiring. When one of the input jacks died, I just left it alone and used the other one which then started working in mono fashion. It didn't do that beforehand ???

I hope your Lucille is easier on you :-)

[Bobby Timmons]

15nf ain't a bad value. Although it does have a different character than the standard 22. It's kind of middy rather than bassy. 18 is a really cool value because ime it's the lowest value that still sounds bassy so it's all creamy.

PS: the cap is not out of the circuit with the tone pot on 10. That's only if you use a no load pot.

[aquin43]

On an ordinary tone control, changing the cap from 22n to 15n raises the "tone fully down" resonance by 3.3 semitones while 18n raises it by 1.7 semitones.

[burchyk]

I routinely replace .022 neck caps with smaller values.

The way my ear hears it, .022 is more like a passive "bass boost" when turned down more than a pinch. I prefer smaller values since they are better at "take away the harshness without losing much midrange".

Get the cheapest box of capacitors of various values and experiment.

[murrayatuptown]

Now I do not remember where I read it, in the last month, that 0.015 and 0.022 uF are (methodically) paired with 250k and 500k pots but I forget the rest of the details.

So I have to got look now to finish my sentence. I'm going to start at Vintage Vibe Guitars rather than start at Google. Google has been feeding me AoI BS this year that is so dead wrong I could make up my own & be more accurate.

Murray

[murrayatuptown]

Discussion of 22 nF (0.022 uF) vs. 47 nF (0.047 uF) on VVG site.

https://www.vintagevibeguitars.com/d...otsAndCaps.pdf

I think there is also some history of 0.05 uF (old 'standard' value that became standardized later as 0.047 uF) in Fender guitars with a 1M pot.

I might not have seen 0.015 compared.

Don't do dimensional analysis on the math. It's been up since 2009 and apparently I'm the first person obsessive enough to ask Pete if he meant something else. There is a decimal point thing he'll get around to fixing. I vaguely think the pots are shown as Ohms instead of kOhms.

Sorry, I used to work at a newspaper in a past life.

[murrayatuptown]

I could/will delete my table above. Pete Biltoft's link in post #10 above DOES explain the capacitor and pot values between tables 2 & 3.

Everything in there makes sense except the K is missing from the tabulated pot values, but is implied in the discussion.