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whitewolf
July 28th, 2009, 10:48 AM
Hi: Can anyone tell me what the little round flat capasitor is for on the Peavey Patriot electric guitar? Also can you tell me what it is? We need an new one and can't figure out what to ask for. It has M 108 printed on it. It grounds under the metal bridge in the middle of the guitar where the strings attach. You can e-mail me at whitewolftoo@windstream.net. Thanks

ibanezjunkie
July 28th, 2009, 02:06 PM
the capacitor (polarised capacitor) is just used for the tone pot, im not sure how it works, but i know thats what its for.

i think M 108 is 108 microfarads? or milifarads? or megafarads. porbably the latter.

MichaelE
July 28th, 2009, 06:13 PM
I don't know what the value of that cap is, but it sounds like a ceramic disc capacitor which is not polarized. M is a 20%+/- tolerance and 10 is the value, 8 is the multiplier.

I've never seen one this high. Are you sure it isn't a '3'?

whitewolf
July 30th, 2009, 11:34 AM
MichaelE. Your absoutely correct, it it appears it is a ceramic disc capacitor that is non-polar and upon examining it with a magnifier it does sort of look like it says M103, it probably is 20% +/- and a 30 picofarads capacitor. What does it do in the guitar? All we did was gently take everything out of the body so we could paint it. When we put it all back the guitar want do anything but hum. Of course Peavey felt it correct to place this capacitor in a small hole by it's self and then run the wire from the rest of the things through a small hole in the body to this capacitor. Then they soldered it on so we had to unsolder it to remove everything. The other wire on it just rests between the metal of the lower string bridge and the body of the guitar. Is it possible that I burned it out with the solder gun or was it just old and decided to go out now? If it's the heat from the soldier gun, how do I put one back without doing that? All I heated it was enough to melt the soldier. I didn't think I over heated it. We have contacted Peavey and they are sending us one that they say will work but I don't want to mess it up too. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

whitewolf
August 1st, 2009, 11:56 AM
Hey guy. I need an answer to my question about weather or not it will hurt this new capacitor to solder it to the wire on the guitar or not? I'm not sure if the original one just went out on it's own or I did it when I soldered it on and off. I would like to get it fixed today. Thanks:confused:

whitewolf
August 2nd, 2009, 10:16 AM
Never mind guy. I couldn't wait on you so I just held an ice cube against the capacitor while I soldered it back in place since I couldn't get an answer here. I still don't know if the heat would have hurt it or not but the way I did it worked. The guitar is working now. Oh, by the way, I called Peavey and told them about the problem and they sent us a new capacitor for free. They have a toll free number and their very helpful compared to most tech support these days.

marnold
August 2nd, 2009, 10:38 AM
Reread your previous question. I wouldn't have gotten from that that you were concerned about heat. Caps are relatively heat-resistant as long as you do all the work in short order. In the future, you could just get a little alligator clip and clip it between the cap and where you are soldering it. The alligator clip will act like a heat-sink.

ibanezjunkie
August 2nd, 2009, 03:20 PM
Reread your previous question. I wouldn't have gotten from that that you were concerned about heat. Caps are relatively heat-resistant as long as you do all the work in short order. In the future, you could just get a little alligator clip and clip it between the cap and where you are soldering it. The alligator clip will act like a heat-sink.


the alligator clip as a heat sink is a good way of not melting your caps, LEDs, Transistors (eventhough many have their own heat sinks, TIP120 for example) etc. One of the first things i learned about soldering onto PCBs.

Duff
February 20th, 2010, 08:03 PM
I have used a damp washcloth and placed it strategically or wrapped it around things that I don't want to cook. This has worked and caused the item I am attempting to protect to cool and require a lot more units of heat to overheat and burn the unit. Anything to draw off the heat or make it harder for the heat to overwhelm the item you are trying to protect seems better than using nothing and taking your chances becasue some of these things are very heat sensitive and can burn very easily.

You have to be smart and careful every time you do soldering. I'm pretty good at it and have all the necessary soldering apparatus I use in a container. I use a twenty five watt Weller pencil type soldering iron that is over twenty years old. I want to get a fourty watt back up unit for fast heat to the point of soldering use; get in fast and out fast before burning things up, but still that initial blast of intense heat can be conducted to items you want to protect, using a wet piece of cloth, wet q tips, ice cube or whatever, just don't short things out with the water; water is a conductor.

Ch0jin
February 21st, 2010, 12:12 AM
:what Something sounds weird here.

Since when does removing the tone cap cause no sound?
You should be able to remove all the tone circuit (i.e. pot and cap) and still get sound, more sound in some cases.

Secondly, I wonder why it wasn't soldered to the pot like every single other guitar I've ever seen, which is not many I'll grant you, but it seems like it's the norm.

If it wasn't a tone cap, then what was it? (.01uf does sound like a likely tone cap for humbuckers)

"The other wire on it just rests between the metal of the lower string bridge and the body of the guitar."

It sounds strangely like the grounding wire that typically runs from the scratch plate to the trem claw (in a strat style guitar) had a cap in series, which also makes no sense to me. Even so, removing that connection should get you hum + guitar sound, not hum only.

Bizarre I tell yah, just bizarre.

Ch0jin
February 21st, 2010, 12:31 AM
the capacitor (polarised capacitor) is just used for the tone pot, im not sure how it works, but i know thats what its for.

i think M 108 is 108 microfarads? or milifarads? or megafarads. porbably the latter.

Hehe, just so ya know, nobody really uses "millifarad" or "Megafarad" in general electronics. No Milli because it's covered within the ones we DO use, and no Mega because, well a megafarad cap would be gigantic and I think they are only used in high end R&D applications. I'm not sure they are even commercially available.

For context, it's common to use 1 Farad caps in very high powered car audio installations because a 1 Farad cap can dump it's charge faster than a 12V car battery and this ensures smooth sub bass response. Yes, that's a cap the size of a can of coke (or larger usually) that can supply power faster than a car battery.

Now a 1 Megafarad cap would be 1.0E6 or 1,000,000 times the capacity of that 1 Farad car audio cap. You could use it to power your street maybe, but it'd have no place in a guitar :)

For reference these are the ones we use.

Farads (= 1,000,000 Microfarads)
Microfarads (= 1000 Nanofarads)
Nanofarads (= 1000 Picofarads)
Picofarads

oldguy
February 21st, 2010, 05:35 AM
Never mind guy. I couldn't wait on you so I just held an ice cube against the capacitor while I soldered it back in place since I couldn't get an answer here. I still don't know if the heat would have hurt it or not but the way I did it worked. The guitar is working now. Oh, by the way, I called Peavey and told them about the problem and they sent us a new capacitor for free. They have a toll free number and their very helpful compared to most tech support these days.


Where oh where has whitewolf gone? Four posts last summer and never heard from again?

Ch0jin
February 21st, 2010, 02:50 PM
oops, that'll teach me to look at the dates posted :)

bcdon
February 21st, 2010, 03:37 PM
Where oh where has whitewolf gone? Four posts last summer and never heard from again?
From his last post, it appears he was mad that The Fret Technical Support wasn't responsive enough.