Do Paper-In-Oil Capacitors REALLY Sound "Better"..?? (vs. Ceramic, Orange Drop, Tropical Fish, etc)

(Comparison starts at 10:19)

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There's a question that has long-plagued internet guitar forums and nerds such as myself....do the posh capacitors that some companies put out ACTUALLY make a difference to how our guitars sound??

In guitar amps, the type of capacitor is incredibly important for the likes of coupling capacitors...the entire signal passes through them, so every subtlety of their sound is vital. I'm a big fan of Dr Z amps, and you'll often hear Z talking about how they use Jupiter caps because they're the closest thing in sound to the old Astrons, etc.

But in a guitar tone circuit, the theory goes that everything passing through the tone cap is dumped to ground...and so we never actually hear anything going through the cap; only what's left. Assuming that capacitors are exactly the same in terms of capacitance value, the 'type' of capacitor shouldn't matter whatsoever. And yet, because Gibson used paper-in-oil Bumblebees back in the late 1950s, various companies charge £30+ for a single reissue Bumblebee capacitor. eBay is littered with capacitors for 'tone upgrades' and many boutique guitars ship with expensive PIO caps as standard. Couldn't they save a few pounds and just put a ceramic cap worth a few pennies in...??

Today, I wanted to compare seven different tone caps...ranging from a £31.95 Luxe Bumblebee Reissue down to a multi-layered ceramic cap worth about 3 pence. Are there any differences? And if so, are they worth bothering about? Perhaps most importantly, are any differences worth spending 1000x more on a capacitor?

What do you think? Any differences? Which was your favourite cap? Would you buy a Luxe? Comment below!

This is the thread from mylespaul.com with details of the 'actual' internals of Gibson's Historic Spec Reissue Bumblebees: https://www.mylespaul.com/threads/his...

Guitar is a Gibson Les Paul Custom with Monty's PAF pickups recorded through a Dr Z Z-Wreck (Celestion AlNiCo Gold; Aston Spirit Condenser) and a Dr Z DB4 (Celestion AlNiCo Cream; '70s Sennheiser MD441and sE RNR1 ribbon) with a Schoeps CMC6 room mic.

0:00 Intro
10:20 Playing Comparison
20:08 Outro


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