Orange Drop "polarity" ?

[butwhatif]

I had an old buddy in the '70s who worked on amps, organs, lots of audio
stuff, who taught me that the line on a cap was the outer foil, and that it was best to orient a cap with the line facing a ground connection, or in the case
of a coupling cap to have it face the most + dc , because b+ in an amp was 'below' ground, which kinda makes sense I guess, from a shielding standpoint.

[mdroberts1243]

Has anybody ever performed any testing to prove a difference in tone between, say, orange drops and 150's (or any others)? Or is it such an obvious thing that it is not up for debate (I must have taken out that portion of my hearing because I have a hard time hearing anything that I would call a significant change when I compared other caps)?

Darrin

My Ceriatone kit came with the Mallory 150s. I found the sound to be a bit harsh and the Mallory's were quite microphonic, so I decided to switch to the ODs from Allenmey.

I found the ODs to give me a lot smoother tone and the epoxy coating certainly eliminated microphonics.

[greiswig]

The part that has always confused me is about where I can find the "low impedance" part of the circuit.

In an effort to clarify for myself and others which is the better way to put the cap in for best shielding, I modified the D'Lite layout by putting stripes on the capacitors. So...assuming that you've put your caps on a scope the way Aiken suggests, and that you have the black stripe on the end that connects to the outside foil, is this diagram showing proper orientation on all caps?

Oh, and for the NFB on V1, does it make a difference?

Thank you!

[Structo]

As quite a few people have stated, there seems to be no appreciable difference to the orientation of the caps.
When I posed this question to Moss he said they generally mount the caps with the writing towards the trannies.
I know the writing seems to be random in regards to the foil but on the orange drops there seems to be little if any noise difference on orientation.
Norm has experimented with the orientation and said he couldn't hear a difference.

[Johnhenry]

I've spent a lifetime tweaking, modding stuff for people, and i've come to the conclusion that there are 2 group's of musicians, "Blessed, and Posssed"
Those that cannot hear the diff when he switch's polarity on a cap = BLESSED !
Those that have to adjust a rubberband on thier Fuzzface = Posessed !
I've opened up a bunch of amp's in thirty year's of repair work, i've seen these same cap's turned everywhich way you can mount them and i really could tell no diff in the output of the amp, so I guess i would be called blessed,
here's a few more,
A guy with a stock reissue bassman, a rat pedal, a tele, and he rock's the house down, Blessed !
A guy that spend's hour's on the bench wondering which color wire make's the best tone ? POSESSED !
Crap ! I just rememered, I got some soldering to do and my Blue Jockey shorts are dirty and i gotta be wearing them if I want my solder to flow propely !
Time to do the Laundry !
Johnhenry

[greiswig]

As quite a few people have stated, there seems to be no appreciable difference to the orientation of the caps.
When I posed this question to Moss he said they generally mount the caps with the writing towards the trannies.
I know the writing seems to be random in regards to the foil but on the orange drops there seems to be little if any noise difference on orientation.
Norm has experimented with the orientation and said he couldn't hear a difference.

I had read that there seems to be no difference in tone, but had not been satisfied with "research" that suggests that the cumulative effect of hum across 5-9 caps wired the "wrong" way (outside foil collecting noise) was not audible. I can easily see where it would be hard to hear the difference when one cap is switched around. But, as has also been said, it couldn't hurt to do this. If you're starting an assembly or tweaking one anyway, why not?

[Structo]

Hey it can't hurt a thing to try it and it may quiet some noise on your amp,
I was just saying that most techs have said they couldn't tell the difference and that the time it took to find the foil side was time better spent elsewhere.
But I don't own a scope and didn't try the Gerald Weber method either.
I'll be interested in your results.

[greiswig]

Hey it can't hurt a thing to try it and it may quiet some noise on your amp,
I was just saying that most techs have said they couldn't tell the difference and that the time it took to find the foil side was time better spent elsewhere.
But I don't own a scope and didn't try the Gerald Weber method either.
I'll be interested in your results.

Me, too. Now...have I got the orientation "right" in the layout above?

[Structo]

Heheheh, that's beyond my skill set to determine that......

[butwhatif]

I would say all are correct except the third from the right on the drawing---

[greiswig]

I would say all are correct except the third from the right on the drawing---

Put that one in there on purpose hoping that someone would notice...

Okay, so the plate side is always "low impedance" relative to, in this case, going through the 1M pot to ground?

[butwhatif]

That is what I was always led to believe, and I think that this issue stems from the radio builders originally, where rf in a chassis is a different beast , and if it makes any difference in a hi gain guitar amp, I wouldn't be willing to put money on it.

[Krinkle]

I'm finding 3 groups of opinions on this.

1. Guys that see the theoretical difference.
2. Guys that can't see the actual difference.
3. Guys that can't prove the actual difference.

With all due respect to everybody, my opinion is that we all fall into every group. If I were able to see a difference I would gladly check each and every cap with a scope and orient them with the foil end to a low impedance connection. This makes total sense to me, just prove to me which end is the foil end without taking the cap apart, I include manufacturer's who "mark" the foil side (is mark short for marketing in some cases?).

I believe in learning what makes things work and using what I can prove, not doing things just in case. I have a buddy that does this based on the all things add up theory and I guarantee you that for the forty different things that he has done to his rig, he didn't get any discernable improvement in the tone or noise coming from his amp, and he's not any happier with his rig.

I guess my ranting stems from really wanting this to be true. I'll freely admit that I was sceptical to begin with. The reason being I worked for a large electronic company that did a lot of testing. There were a bunch of older expert guys in the test lab and whenever we had EMC/EMI radiated or conducted emission problems that involved components, it was always circuit layout or component selection/specification. I never heard any of them tell me to turn the cap around. Granted, the circuits I worked on were not tube based (high voltage, high impedance), so I'm willing to get dragged into this in hopes of building a better amp (I figure that's part of the reason we're here).

If anybody has some little clue or secret from the past and can prove this, PLEASE SHARE. Anybody up for creating a tube amp Mythbusters show?

And to everybody who disagrees, I respect your opinion, to each his own. Just trying to get to the bottom of a few things to put them in place, not debate them forever. I've tried Aiken's test with the scope and it didn't work for me, if anybody can help me prove it to be true I would be very grateful. If not, show me something else that we can try, not debate, and I'll give it a shot. If not, I'm moving on. Thanks for bearing with me, most forums would have flamed me out on this one.

Darrin

[lymo]

I read all the cap discussion here, and feel thankful for the forum. In a recent '97 circuit dumble build I did (with reverb added) instead of a tone stack for the OD channel, I put in a 6 position switch that changed the coupling cap to the output. I put in mallory 150s, Orange drops, and ceramics. Every position has a little different sound. I was surprised how much I liked the cheap ceramics. Everything I read seems to point a guy to use Mallorys or Orange Drops, but well, I like meatball sandwiches too, so maybe I'm just low brow. The guy who bought the amp keeps sending me emails saying he likes it, so I'm not alone...

Great discussion, wish I had more time to sit in front of the computer...
________
Sex Rehab Forums

[ampdoc1]

I know I have too much hearing damage to hear the difference in the "direction" of the caps, but I did try to test some orange drops via the "fluorescent light" method. On a couple I could discern a difference on the scope, but on most there was little or none.
Also, on the PTP vs PCB, I built my first couple of TW clones on PCBs I designed (made by Express PCB). They had 0 hum and less noise than any amp I've owned, and put out a ridiculous amount of wonderful harmonic overtones.

There are NO absolutes in amp building!

ampdoc