Crazy Tone Thing 2: The Sequel

Well, part 2 of the tone video took waaaay longer than I anticipated!  I spent a ridiculous amount of time editing, and animating illustrations of the tone circuit.

Here I present a tutorial on how to read cap values, an explanation of how the capacitance and resistance work together as an RC filter in the tone circuit, and some audio examples to help in selecting a useful cap value for a tone circuit. 

Orange Drop CapacitorsI play through a series of Orange Drop caps with values (pictured right-to-left) .047uF, .022uF, .01uF, 6800pF, 4700pF, 3300pF and 1000pF.

Correction: in the video, at 2:52, I said this incorrectly. The cutoff frequency doesn’t actually change- just the amount of signal passed through the cap to ground. To change the cutoff frequency, pick a different capacitance value. This configuration of resistor and capacitor, in parallel with the guitar signal, makes this a Low Pass RC filter.

Correction: in the video at 4:21, the .022uF cap is a 225p orange drop which is polyester film while the rest are polypropylene.

I purchased these Orange Drops at Mouser – significantly cheaper than at guitar specialty stores.

As with part 1 of this video, everything is played on my Epiphone Riviera P93 with Vintage Vibe Guitars P-90 pickups, through my Vox VT30 on the Boutique Clean model, mic’d with a Rode NT1 large diaphragm microphone.