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bedroom rocker
September 6th, 2009, 03:25 AM
ive been on a neverending quest to mod my ebay robison 'les paul', not only to improve the sound, but to gain experience in modifying guitars (if i stuff anything up, the guitar cost me 167 aud and wouldnt really affect me).. im moving house at the moment, and as i was cleaning up the yard, i found an old defunct panasonic portable radio that id smashed up, and found a large chunk of circuit board with a crap load of capacitors on it. ill post the pictures of it below (excuse the crap quality, i took pics with my laptop camera), just wondering if any of these capacitors could be used to replace the cheap ones on my robison les paul or sx strat tone/volume pots. ill try and post some of the uf ratings on the pots, but im gonna desolder as much of them as i can tonight and inspect them closely. if you can make out the various cp's i can use, if there is any, and someone could highlight them in microsoft paint etc, itd be hugely appreciated . cheers :beer:

1914

1915

btw ill post a pic of the modded robison "les paul in another forum if anyones interested

bedroom rocker
September 6th, 2009, 05:31 AM
okay, heres a crappy quality pic of some of the capacitors ive managed to extract so far.. there are some small orange disc shaped ones ive yet to remove, mainly cause i grip the pliers too tight and crush them :rotflmao: but below is a pic with descriptions of what was written on each one ive gotten out.. hope someone can make sense of it and tell me if any can be useful.. btw i read on another site that anything over 1uf is way too much??.. just askin as i cant find many sites describing accurately what types are needed for guitar and what they look like. again, cheers for the help :beer:

1916

Kazz
September 6th, 2009, 05:43 AM
The 2 items you have marked with questions marks are resistors.

bedroom rocker
September 6th, 2009, 06:04 AM
ahh k :thwap: i seen on ebay that very similiar looking things were coveted "bumblebee" gibson capacitors selling for 80 bucks each.. thanks anyway

bedroom rocker
September 6th, 2009, 06:16 AM
The 2 items you have marked with questions marks are resistors.

judging by your amount of posts, and your obvious electrical experience, do you honestly reckon any of these could be used on a guitar???

bedroom rocker
September 6th, 2009, 06:18 AM
judging by your amount of posts, and your obvious electrical experience, do you honestly reckon any of these could be used on a guitar???

by the way, theres at least another 30 or so electrical capacitors, resistors etc, with different values that ive yet to desolder, but the majority of them appear similiar to the ones in the picture

Zip
September 6th, 2009, 07:00 AM
Take a look at this page : http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electronics,_pickups/Components:_Caps_(capacitors)/Capacitors.html
You can see how inexpensive they are to buy (altho desoldering stuff can be cheap therapy :)), and also what some values are typically used for.

bedroom rocker
September 7th, 2009, 01:28 AM
Take a look at this page : http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electronics,_pickups/Components:_Caps_(capacitors)/Capacitors.html
You can see how inexpensive they are to buy (altho desoldering stuff can be cheap therapy :)), and also what some values are typically used for.

:AOK: cheers mate, that helped a LOT
"• Use 0.001µF (microfarad) for treble-bleed circuits on volume controls.
• 0.020µF and 0.050µF are common guitar tone control caps
• 0.050µF and .100µF are used for electric bass"

so i assume 0.100uf is 1uf?

btw those green "tracons" on my diagram look exactly like the ones on my 'les paul' tone pots.. although they are slightly larger. i might try and put one on tonight and if it works, ill post audio clips of the differences

bedroom rocker
September 7th, 2009, 04:40 AM
done... here are the results

1921 stock capacitor

1922 "tracon" capacitor

after 6 seconds on both clips, i rolled down the neck tone control and you will hear a subtle difference between them.. so experimentation is the key! :AOK:

for the record, for both clips i played the same riff, in the neck position on the selector, and obviously with the same volume, mids, treble etc on the amp. there you go, i might try something similiar with my sx if i get bored enough