On A Tone Quest

Recently, I've begun tweaking my guitars with different capacitors to modify their tone's feel and quality, and I'm finding it to be dangerously addictive.

From a purely mechanical standpoint, if the tolerances are the close to the same, you'll not hear a whole lot of difference as far as the range of tone is concerned — between different types of capacitors of the same value, that is. However, the quality and feel of the tone is noticeably different between different types of capacitors. From ceramic to paper in oil, different materials will make your tone more bright or brittle, and others will sweeten and round it out.

I've spent the last week playing with some .022uF Tone Factory Vitamin Qs, and they really gave my Les Paul a more woody, rounded sound. Wired in the 50s style, my Les Paul has a great bark to it (no pun intended), and an overall warmer sound. When played with my high-gain effects, I get a nice rough sound, and great harmonic overtones.

That said, now that I'm mildly addicted to doing this, I'm trying out a few more "vintage" caps. The first up will be some Jupiter Beeswax Paper Foil caps, and I'll be giving the .022uF and .01uF caps a try. No pun is intended (again) but these beeswax caps — more so than other beeswax caps — are said to really sweeten the tone with nice lows and solid highs.