Sozo vs Sozo?

[iknowjohnny]

Well, if it gives the premiums any credence as to their worth, the reason i posted this is because one of the techs at bogner told me they only use the premiums because they found them to sound considerably better than the standard sozos. i didn't take that as gospel tho because i need more than one opinion, but looks like the same notion is reflected here. Of course this means i'll have no choice but to buy them. Well, i DO have a second choice....spend the rest of my life wondering and obsessing about them. I think i'll just spend the $40 instead. It's much less stressful.

[Cliff Schecht]

I just don't have that kind of scratch to blow on coupling caps. I really need to order and try some Xicon MPP's, I've heard nothing but (surprisingly) good things..

[iknowjohnny]

Depends on how you look at it Cliff. To me its a bargain because i would say it's the biggest improvement i've gotten by purchasing parts that are supposed to be tone enhancing. Look at transformers. Some people spend $200 or more for a mercury but while i haven't used those i have used 3 other brands in the same amp and the difference between the worse and best is much less than the sozos. Then theres tubes. how many times have you paid $30-40 or more for a pair of outputs only to find they didn't sound any better or maybe not as good. And how about NOS tubes ! Lets not even go there !

Point is, sozos may seem expensive because you're looking at them as caps. The thing is, I don't decide whether or not to buy a cap or a tranny or tube based on how much it is FOR WHAT IT IS. I look at everything as how much improvement will i get for X amount of money. I bet most people would pay $200 for a mercury if they really thought it would enhance tone to a certain degree. But the funny thing is, i'd bet most would not pay the same amount for a set of caps if they would enhance the tone exactly the same amount as the mercury ! See where i'm going here? I got more improvement out of the sozos than any part(s) i have ever bought. Therefore i consider them a bargain because they took my amp up several notches. The premiums are double the cost yet I intend to buy them because everyone so far has told me they are considerably better than the standards. If thats true, and so far everyone was right about the standards, then the improvement i get will be the bargain of the century.

So the point in short is, measure cost vs result, not cost vs what other caps cost. Who cares if they cost 3-4 times that of a mallory. My amp with mallories was not near as good sounding IMO the $$28 it will cost me to outfit my amp with premiums vs the $8 or 10 for mallories is a incredible bargain. FAR better tone for snout $18 more. And even the sozo standards at only about $5 more sound a lot better. Talk about a bargain !

[JamesHealey]

Depends on your goal. I've got hundreds of the lcr pc/hv/s/wf cap in various values i use because i can afford them and they sound great! But i can't afford to do that with sozo! Admittedley the sozo colour the sound in a pleasing way but it's just not worth the money for me when i get such a clear tone that isn't coloured i can voice my amps accordingly

[overtone]

While A-B testing several caps recently there was a 001uf vintage mustard Sozo that sounded so very much better than the standard Sozo 001uf. It really impressed me, in way that Jana explained above.
I had built myself a little A-B box, which takes about 10 caps, because I wanted to make my own mind up about all the cap discussions. It became useful for auditioning caps for certain locations too. I have a mule amp that gets loaded with the caps for 100 hours first.
In the test / audition mentioned above I actually ended up using a 500pf domino-mica cap for that particular location and that's the beauty of a little A-B box. It can open up your mind as well as your amp.

[Super_Reverb]

Let's be honest here. All capacitors, resistors, tubes, and transformers, and speakers, and cabinets color the sound to some degree on another.

The sound of an electric guitar was born with a nonlinear amp that adds significant color to the guitar sound.

IMO, it's not really all that accurate or useful to say one capacitor colors a sound less or more than the other - it's a matter of the degree of color. Like Cliff said, each capacitor has a different color.

Unless you have done spectral analysis on a pure guitar tone, you don't really know what a pure guitar tone sounds like. And... the proximity of strings to pickups, pickup characteristics, tone/volume controls, and cord, etc. all color the sound as the signal makes its way to the 1st preamp stage.

cheers,

rob

[Structo]

^^^^ I agree.

[iknowjohnny]

The way i see it is everything colors sound if you compare pure guitar tone. Pure guitar tone is something no one here would want. You'd be more likley to get closer to it with a 70's SS peavey than any high end guitar amp today Pure guitar tone could only be heard thru a good hi-fi. The sozos as i said earlier just gave me more harmonic complexity than it had previously, which to me is not coloring as much as just adding more of a good thing. But compared to the literal meaning of pure guitar tone there nothing any of us tdo to improve our amps that doesn't color tone. But the question should be how and do you like the result.
That said, i'm ordering the premiums today. More of what the standards gave me would just be incredible.

[Structo]

Or you could just say, "I like the way those caps sound."

[Firestorm]

I just don't have that kind of scratch to blow on coupling caps. I really need to order and try some Xicon MPP's, I've heard nothing but (surprisingly) good things..

Dirt cheap and surprisingly competent.

For new designs we can specify anything we want and MAYBE discover magic. But the old-time manufacturers didn't devote that much thought to it. The beloved mustard caps used in old Marshals were near the bottom of Philips' price sheet and cobbled together somewhere in Turkey, of all places.

[Alexo]

I just don't have that kind of scratch to blow on coupling caps. I really need to order and try some Xicon MPP's, I've heard nothing but (surprisingly) good things..

Dirt cheap and surprisingly competent.

For new designs we can specify anything we want and MAYBE discover magic. But the old-time manufacturers didn't devote that much thought to it. The beloved mustard caps used in old Marshals were near the bottom of Philips' price sheet and cobbled together somewhere in Turkey, of all places.

So to follow that to its logical conclusion, who is making really crappy (by technical standards) caps today?

[iknowjohnny]

I believe what it comes down to is a cap like mallory is a good product, made well and all that. But a sozo is made with a different agenda, that being to recreate caps that give the tone that for decades has been sought after. it's not a matter of quality, it's a matter of purpose.There IS one difference that i feel is a quality difference with sozos...the leads are thicker. Mallory's leads are IMO too thin.

[Firestorm]

So to follow that to its logical conclusion, who is making really crappy (by technical standards) caps today?

Hah! Harder to find than you'd think. So much modern stuff is manufactured using a high degree of automation (except Sozo premiums, which I think are "hand" wound) do it's difficult to come up with much that has the inconsistency and "sloppiness" of the old stuff.

I just think it's instructive to think about what drove Fender/Gibson/Marshall Ampeg's parts selection: they wanted the a) cheapest part (to keep margins up), that b) would not fail in use (to keep it from coming back to the retailer).

[KellyBass]

I don't care for caps that add "coloring" to the sound either. That's why I like the Sozo's--they seem to let all the nuances and clarity pass through (once they are broken in).

But, to each their own. Some like Orange drops--I detest them with a passion.

++++++++++1 on the OD's! I thought I was alone on this one. Anytime I've used them in the signal, in any one of their varieties, I just don't like what I hear. Maybe the sozo's have spoiled me.

Oh , I guess there's might be a use for them...somewhere. Maybe if I decided to build a cardboard guitar and needed a LOT of grainy, sizzly, cold treble added in. Just my .02.

But, I'll be the first to admit that after 30+ years of gigging, the top range of my hearing probably isn't what it used to be.

[iknowjohnny]

Well, they cost more than i thought. The cheapest were the .0047's at $4, but the .022's i needed 5 of were $5 and the .1's were, gulp, $7 !!! But even at over $50, I DON'T CARE ! If they sound no better than the standards i'd be bummed. But even 10-15% more of what the standards gave me would make it worthwhile. I've paid an extra $1000 or more in the past to buy a new amp that is as much better than my old one as the difference i heard between the mallories and sozo standards. So 50 bucks is nothing. A single mullard AX7 will set you back 2-4 times that, and to me the difference isn't as great. Cannot wait to hear these, better yet after break in. Can't even imagine.