help ID this capacitor

(Moderator, please feel free to post this in another forum if more appropriate.)

Tearing down my '65 CE-100D (converted in the 70s with Gibson pickups) in preparation for a complete rewiring, I found one Orange Drop capacitor, but the other was one I've never seen before:

Body is about 16 mm long. Markings are 0.01μf / +10% 200V / D6W Holland

I didn't keep track of which pot it was attached to. The wiring was a spaghetti of green, red, and black wires with a whole lot of extra length, presumably not original, but then I don't know what the original wiring would have looked like.

Is this capacitor possibly original, or put in at the time of the pickup transplant for an especially bright tone? (That's my limited understanding of what an 0.010 cap would give)

It's mostly academic at this point because I'm putting in a Toneman kit with PIO caps, but is this cap worth saving for some future project?

I just mapped out the wiring on my '64 CE100D two days ago! Mine has .05 on the neck and .005 on the bridge. I've seen those caps on other Guilds, though. I'm also not in the "vintage caps sound better" camp, so if I were to save it it would be to restore an old Guild.

It was my '66 Starfire that had that type of cap:

Yes, that is most likely original to the guitar, a Mullards “mustard” cap. Very desirable and likely to still be fine. I have seen them is similar vintage Guild amps, as well as being a key element in Marshall amps.

Amp guys swoon over mustards!

stellerscrub said:

Markings are 0.01μf / +10% 200V / D6W Holland

The wiring was a spaghetti of green, red, and black wires with a whole lot of extra length, presumably not original, but then I don't know what the original wiring would have looked like.

Is this capacitor possibly original, or put in at the time of the pickup transplant for an especially bright tone? (That's my limited understanding of what an 0.010 cap would give)

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What you describe of the wiring does not sound original. The original wiring looked like in GAD's picture.

The cap is a Mullard Mustard cap. The naming came from the color. Philips was the owner of the Mullard Radio Valve Co. Ltd. since 1927 already and Philips is in The Netherlands, hence the Holland marking. They are very good capacitors.

This 0.01 μf mustard cap capacitor is the original one as used on the Guild bridge pickup tone circuit!

Example pictures:



The neck pickup tone circuit usually had a 0.047 μf WIMA capacitor originally (red or blue as shown in GAD's picture). WIMA was one of the first companies to use metalized polypropylene film as a dielectric in capacitors. In the '70s and '80s, because high cost and perceived performance, they were widely used in high-end stereo. Still considered one of the leading mfrs of close tolerance, industrial-grade components.



Guild's idea at that time was that the bigger capacitor value like .047μf is at the neck p/u tone pot and the smaller value, like .01 μf is at the bridge p/u tone pot. This should give the player a "darker" "jazzy" sound for the neck pickup and a clearer sound for the bridge pickup. Now the additional lower resistance on the neck tone pot (200k ohms instead of the other 3 with 500k ohms) also means that more high frequencies go to ground, so the neck pickup is extra “dark”.

Ralf

From talking to Aaron Newman, I would suspect that Al Dronge specified this. Aaron said that Al was a talented jazz guitarist, but he preferred the tone completely rolled down.

When they were designing the Anti-hums, AL was constantly badgering them to "Make it sound more like a Gibson!"

Default said:

When they were designing the Anti-hums, AL was constantly badgering them to "Make it sound more like a Gibson!"

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Thankfully, they were decidedly good pickups for those of us who play rock and, for me, power pop.

Jeff Haddad said:

Amp guys swoon over mustards!

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We are fortunate they appeased Al with caps and pots, rather than pickup design.

Please help me understand. I know that capacitors store electricity, but how do they function? What is their purpose in life?

Rich Cohen said:

Please help me understand. I know that capacitors store electricity, but how do they function? What is their purpose in life?

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Here’s a good article, Rich. Essentially, what they are doing is sending high frequencies to ground and decluttering the sound of unwanted noise. Different cap values will shunt different frequency ranges.
https://www.electricherald.com/guitar-capacitors-tonecaps-guide/

Choosing WHICH cap value is the problem. As mentioned above, what works for someone may not be your cup of tea. Erick Coleman did a StewMac video on how to choose the right cap value for you and your guitar.



OK, that’s your homework for today, there WILL be a quiz in the morning.

Capacitors filter frequencies in AC circuits which is what’s in a guitar.

Thanks, I knew I would get lots of good info here. Now I have to decide whether to use the mustard cap in my rewire or stay with the .015 PIO bridge cap supplied with the Toneman kit?

Many will dispute me, but I say it doesn't matter. Some of the best sounding guitars I've owned had crappy little ceramic disc caps in them, and I'm a guy that loves to upgrade everything. IMO good pots with the right values and curves do far more for tone that caps do.

A capacitor naturally acts as a high-pass filter in an audio circuit, but you can turn it into a low-pass filter (as in rolling off treble with a 'Tone' pot) by wiring its output to ground. Capacitors like to let DC current flow through while blocking AC, and higher audio frequencies look more like DC to a cap than do lower frequencies.

Also, if you never use your tone pots it doesn't really matter what value caps are wired to those pots. The pot itself offers some resistance, which jibes with GAD's point above about the importance of pots, but your guitar's signal will hardly touch the caps at all unless you roll down a tone knob.

-Dave-

Quantum Strummer said:

Capacitors like to let DC current flow through while blocking AC, and higher audio frequencies look more like DC to a cap than do lower frequencies.

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I'm sure you understand all of this, but it didn't come through in that sentence.

I think the simplest way to think about caps is that they are sorta like resistors with resistance that is proportional to 1/f. When f=0 (aka DC) the resistance is infinite. In reality, they're more complicated than that, but if you only know one thing about capacitors, then that's as good as anything else to remember.

stellerscrub said:

Now I have to decide whether to use the mustard cap in my rewire or stay with the .015 PIO bridge cap supplied with the Toneman kit?

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Since you change all the pots anyway I would use the new capacitor supplied with that kit. That way it all belongs together.
Ralf

Another video popped up in feed today, this time running through different types of capacitors of the same value. Compare the paper-in-oil example to the “vintage gray”, which I think is a mustard cap. I do hear differences.