Orange Drops Vs Silver Mica

[droptrd]

I was talking to an amp repair guy, and he said using silver mica caps can give some tone benefits. He said he likes to use them over the orange drops. He also said to deffinately swap out the ceramic's for the silver micas.

What do you guys think? Does this apply to the MTS?

Ive only used orange drops and ceramics in my modules.

 

[okstrat]

I'd be a little careful, since most silver micas are really small caps, and I haven't seen them in the sizes (capacitance wise) that Orange Drops come in. If he really did say he likes to replace Orange drops with silver Micas, I'd be a little leery of him.

Ceramics have their own sound, so do micas. One isn't always 'best' - its kinda like saying chocolate is better than strawberry.

Pete

 

[Soulinsane]

I think the mica caps sound nice but like Pete said, alone they don't have large enough values to replace most caps. What you can do though is use a mica cap in parallel or some times series with other caps. In fact, mixing caps in parallel/series is a great way to get custom capacitance values and depending on the type of caps used can yield some unique tones. What type of caps sound best depends all on you and where they are used. Its very subjective.

 

[okstrat]

Parallel is always an option, but the largest I've seen was a 1000pf, or .001. Good for C3, but you'll need to put four of them in parallel to get to a stock value for some modules (.0047).

If you wanted to put them in the tone stack, you'd need to put 22 of them in parallel for each position. Ditto for most modules between tube stages. Mouser shows some larger values, but when you click on them in the catalog it goes to .001 values. Not sure if one or the other is a typo. The .001's are around $3.50 each.

Pete

 

[droptrd]

Thats kinda what i was thinkin, but i just wanted to here it from the pros. Thanks Guys! Great Info!