So this is just a question on what capacitor does the best job controlling a piezo rod?

While I'm at it what do you find to be the best saddle material for piezo rods.

I have tried many different combos and wanted to hear your ideas on this.

One thing about root instruments I really like, is the minimalist approach.

here is one of my builds with a .022 orange drop and bone saddle.

If you have not tried this its the least expensive way to get a good sounding electric guitar, the rod alone sounds good but have a harsh high end. Depending on it's value of the cap. lets you tailor the overall tone.

My reason for this post is I found a odd cap. that really shines with my scratch build amps .

What Says You! 

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I wasn't suggesting a treble bleed circuit, I was using it as an example of wiring a cap and resistor together at the jack.

If your using pots, the better the quality pot - the better the results. I prefer the large Alpha's or the large CTS pots. Never met a mini pot that was worth the money spent on them. Got a mini pot in a CBG right now that needs to be replaced, you only get full on or half on from 9 to 0.

You could really fine tune the sound that way,thats is why I started putting the caps on.

If you can do without a pot as Forest would say "one less thing".

microfarads, nanofarads or picofarads I have no clue but I Thought  the 3rd number on a pot was the multiplier and that would make this a .00086 but all 863 caps I find online say they are .068 which you find on a lot of cheap guitars.

But if anyone finds a better cap or idea please post.

http://www.guitarfetish.com/Electronics_c_13.html

http://www.stewmac.com/Pickups_and_Electronics/Components_and_Parts...

http://smallbear-electronics.mybigcommerce.com/

Here's a few, but there's others. Allparts, Sweetwater, AMS, Jameco and Mouser sell them too. The above links and named places also sell caps at good prices.

Read down to almost the bottom of the page on the 300guitars site discussion on tone caps. He gives a range of caps within the spectrum from .1 uF to .001 uF to experiment with.

Fenders typically use .047 uF tone caps, which will shunt higher frequencies to ground as generated from single coil pups, while Gibson typically uses .022 uF tone caps, due to the nature of humbuckers having higher output while simultaneously already being darker sounding. Remember, the larger the value of the cap, the higher frequency it will shunt to ground, effectively removing it from your tone. So .1 uF will make it sound flat and muddy, while .001 uF will sound pretty bright and trebly.

Now, remember that CBG circuits typically only have millivolts running through them, if using mag pups (and all those refs above for tone caps are for mag pup-equipped guitars). If using a piezo pup, these generate even smaller voltages (which is why running a pre-amp with a piezo is a good idea into an amplifier - remember too that the the purpose of an amplifier is to AMPLIFY those mini-mini voltages into voltages that can drive a speaker, so you can actually hear the kewl tones you're seeking). The voltage ratings on caps, especially the cheap ones, run between 200 - 500 V, which you will NEVER exceed inside a typical CBG circuit; they are there as a safety feature to show what voltage the cap must not exceed, or it will fail.

Then there are cap types, depending on what dielectric material is used to provide resistance between the cap plates. For guitars, ceramic discs, and various films (metal, polyester, etc.) have been used as the dielectric material in caps. Who cares, especially if the uF rating on the cap is the same, irrespective of the dielectric material? Well, some people can actually hear the difference, on guitars with mag pups. For CBG purposes, though, you can easily get away with the cheap film caps costing less than $1.00; no need to put an Orange Drop on there, unless you just wanna.

tiny little cap shaves a thin slice off the highest end frequencies, big caps take a healthy bite out of mid-high & up frequencies

Yep. Some people can actually hear those slices, most can't. You could even get crazy, and make a comb filter using specific caps for specific freqs. But it'd sound really odd.

Let me see if I can find my Mr. wizard hat...

capacitors take a little time to charge up.  while they are sucking in charge the current still flows.  once they are fully charged the current stops. 

high frequencies that switch much faster than the capacitor shoot right through the capacitor as if it were just another wire.

low frequencies that switch much slower than the capacitor will charge the capacitor in a fraction of a cycle and the capacitor acts like a cut wire, no current passes through.

so putting a cap across the signal/ground in a git acts like a short to high frequencies and grounds them out before getting to the amp, and low frequencies practically ignore the capacitor.

putting a resister on one of the cap's legs reduces how much of the energy it can suck in, so those high frequencies lose less energy. 

I think I get that I think.

All I know is it sounds better with one

just to further the physics that muddy these waters ...

The tone pot could be replaced with a fixed value resister if you can decide on what setting of your pot you like best and measure it.

in the case of just a cap without a pot, you are essentially doing that with a very tiny value resister being the inherent resistance of the cap's internals, resistance of the legs, resistance of the wires, etc.

if it were a resistance-free path, the juice would shoot through the wire with so much amperage that the wires and cap would melt...(Amps = Volts / Resitance and if R = 0 then A = V / 0 = infinity even if V is in the microvolts range)

I like it: Muddy Water Physics!

"Got my black cat bone, my John de Conquerer root
A variable resistor, and a .047 uF cap to boot
Jus' tryin' dump them howlin' freqs to ground
Give myself dat Delta sound."

technically... 1/C = 1/C1 + 1/C2 + . . .  So if the values are the same, it's half at .11..  parallel adds the values of the capacitors.  think of Caps like a battery you charge and discharge at high frequency...

Of course resistors are opposite... series = R1+R2, Parallel : 1/R = 1/R1 + 1/R2 + . . .

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