Sprague Orange Drop Review

[Decko]

Anyone use Sprague Orange Drop in their circuits?

I picked up a box of caps from a defunct old electronics store.
In the box is what appears to be Sprague Orange drops ranging in values.

.0022
.0025
.025
.027

Are these useful?
Are these good caps?

Danny

[Gaz]

You're lucky. Very useful values for tonestack mid/bass caps as well as coupling caps in many builds.

[rdjones]

Orange Drop is a somewhat generic description, as there are several varieties of "Orange Drops".
In answer to your basic question, yes they are good quality and used in a number of OEM circuits and I use them in some situations.

I assume they are marked Sprague, (hence your question) but is there a code such as "418P" ?
If so these were the type used by Fender in the '80s.

rd

[Lynxtrap]

Age might be an issue with capacitors, but maybe not so much with signal caps?

[gary sanders]

I got a lot of them from a friend who was once a TV/radio tech.I have them in almost everything,old ones and only had a couple that were bad out of maybe 50.I like them.Just used my last four .1uf in my last build.

But I will say the little chiklet size Nichicons in my champ build sound just as good.

[ampgeek]

Do confirm their voltage rating before installing to assure that they are up to the task.

Don't ask how I know that!

Cheers and Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Dave O.

[sixstringer]

I A/Bed some Sprague Orange Drops against Mallory 150s and Sozos.
The Orange Drops had a brighter tone over the others IMO.

[Structo]

SBE is the current manufacturer of Orange Drop caps.

There are various POLYESTER and POLYPROPYLENE and film/ foil and metalized film capacitors.

The 6PS (600vdc) series is what most of us use, particularly in the Dumbles.

http://orangedrop.sbelectronics.com/product_specs.html

[Gaz]

SBE is the current manufacturer of Orange Drop caps.

There are various POLYESTER and POLYPROPYLENE and film/ foil and metalized film capacitors.

The 6PS (600vdc) series is what most of us use, particularly in the Dumbles.

http://orangedrop.sbelectronics.com/product_specs.html

I can't find "6PS" on the whole page! ??

[Structo]

Look at the 7th one down from the top.

It's listed as the PS, but they have different voltage ratings.
The 6PS are the 600v ones.

[Gaz]

Cool, that's what I was guessing. Can you tell I'm a 150M guy?

[rp]

AES has 6PS in all values. Yes brighter than 150s, but they are very good musical caps IMO. 715/6 not so good for vintage builds IME.

[rdjones]

SBE is the current manufacturer of Orange Drop caps.

There are various POLYESTER and POLYPROPYLENE and film/ foil and metalized film capacitors.

The 6PS (600vdc) series is what most of us use, particularly in the Dumbles.

http://orangedrop.sbelectronics.com/product_specs.html

Well, I've been trying to learn a bit more about the various types of cap construction and found an old data sheet for the 418P.
They are polyester film and foil, 85 C temp rated, 10% tolerance, and were made in voltages of 100V, 200V, 400V and 600V.
I also found that there are more variants of Orange Drops than I first realized.

Now ... to which type of construction do we owe the characteristics of bright or even harsh that's often attributed to Orange Drops ?

rd

[Colossal]

Now ... to which type of construction do we owe the characteristics of bright or even harsh that's often attributed to Orange Drops ?

rd

That would be the polypropylene variety. Typically 715P and 716P (now SBE, was Sprague) polypropylene Orange Drops.

In conversation most guys (non-amp builders) often blanket-categorize signal caps. Orange Drop = Fender, mustard cap/Mallory 150M/Sozo = Marshall: End of discussion. There seems to be a lot of confusion around orange drops because of this bias. Most non-builders don't know that orange drops are just a form factor and the dielectric material has to be taken into account when making a judgement about tone. Some polypropylene caps are metallized others film/foil. 715P and 716P series are polypropylene film foil and are very temperature stable caps.

I recently finished a Marshall high gain build for a client. I used IC MPW series metallized polypropylene (they happen to be tubular and yellow, not orange) caps throughout the amp. In a blind taste test, various players who have no knowledge of capacitors played and listened to the amp said it was one of the warmest and smoothest Marshalls (clone) they have heard. It was not brittle or bright. I added a couple of Sozos in the tone stack to get a little polyester smear on the note.

I think that tubes and transformers and the power supply play a bigger role in the overall sound of the amplifier and it is inaccurate to make some sweeping judgement that if an amp which falls into one camp (Marshall, Fender, Vox) or another it is going to sound bright if one uses Orange Drops. On that alone if you show someone the interior of a Marshall amp with Orange Drops and they subscribe to "internet lore" they might automatically develop hearing bias to say that the amp sounds too top-endy even though the Orange Drop in use might actually be a polyester dielectric not polypropylene. When I hear a brittle or anemic sounding amp, it is often some production model where the mfr. used low grade (undersized) transformers. When the transformers are replaced with 3-5lb. blocks of quality steel, the same amp suddenly starts sounding quite good.

FWIW, I just bashed a test-bed Liverpool together using all polypropylene caps and it too is one of the warmest amps I've heard (I used a Cut control to balance the top end which is present in the design). It is articulate with spectacular definition.

Whenever someone mentions Orange Drops, it's helpful to know what series they are referring too. If they don't know, it usually tells me that they are throwing out conversational filler to convince you that they know more than they do