Hello, and welcome back to Mod Garage. To
start this last installment about tone capacitors
for Strats, I would like to tell you a story
that happened to me some years ago. I swear
it’s all true. Hopefully you will not send me to
the stake after reading it—and no voodoo,
either, please!
One of our customers, a professional guitarist
from Switzerland, called and wanted to bring in a
vintage guitar he had acquired a few days before,
because “there was something wrong with the
electronics.” When he arrived and opened up
the case, there it was: a 1962 Stratocaster in all
its glory! The guitar had obviously been played a
lot, but other than a bunch of dings it was in very
good condition. The previous owner had said it
didn’t sound very good and sold it at a price our
customer couldn’t pass up.
First Nirvana, Then Blah
I took it out of the case, tuned it, and noodled
on a few chords and licks without plugging in.
I was instantly stunned: It was one of the most
acoustically vibrant guitars I’d ever played!
The whole thing resonated—from the end
of the body up to the headstock—you could
even feel some notes when you touched the
headstock. The overtones seemed to jump
out of this guitar. I was in playing heaven.
However, after plugging the guitar into an
amp, I was really disappointed. It didn’t sound
bad—and the tone was noticeably Strat-y—but
it was far away from being a fantastic-sounding
guitar. None of the superb acoustic qualities
were there. It just sounded average. As you
may know, buying a vintage guitar does not
guarantee good vintage tone. Over the years
I’ve seen a lot of lemons from the Golden Age
of guitar building, so I thought maybe this could
be one of those guitars. I plugged it into my
1959 Bassman using a high-quality guitar cable,
but the result was the same. I agreed with the
customer that there had to be something wrong
with the electronics. After unstringing the guitar,
we opened it and found that most of the electronics
were stock. There was one replaced tone
pot, an Orange Drop tone capacitor, and a new
ground wire running from the tremolo compartment
to the case of the volume pot. That’s it,
nothing too special. Pots can fail after such a
long time, wires can break, and replacement
tone caps are nothing uncommon. The pickups,
switch, wiring, two of the three pots, and the
output jack were absolutely stock.
The Ol’ Pickguard-Swap Test
My next step was to take out the pickguard,
including the output jack, and put in an already-wired
replacement pickguard that we use as a
reference for testing. This pickguard is loaded
with standard parts like CTS pots, a CRL 5-way
switch, and a set of Fender 57/62 pickups. The
goal was to create an average-quality pickguard
for testing—nothing too fancy and nothing
below average. After connecting everything
and restringing the guitar, we plugged it in
and it blew me away! Without any adjustment
of the pickup heights, the sound was fantastic.
Very transparent, punchy, and with all of the
vintage Strat attributes we love. Our customer
was totally freaking over how good the guitar
sounded, and it took me some time to convince
him to lay down the guitar again. You all
know this special moment—playing and hearing
your new guitar for the first time. It always
brings a huge smile to your face. I guess you all
know what happened then…after some adjustments,
our test pickguard remained on the
Strat as a loan while we promised to check and
repair the original electronics.
CSI: Germany
To double-check everything, I temporarily
installed the vintage pickguard on one of our
test guitars, a standard Made-in-Mexico Fender
Stratocaster. The result was the same. The tone
was average and had no personality. I took
some high-resolution pics for reference and
then pulled all the parts out of the pickguard to
test them. To make sure the pickups were OK, I
soldered them, one by one, directly to the output
jack. They all sounded fantastic. So it was
clear that the pickups were fine and that the
failure was somewhere in the wiring and/or the
switches or pots. After unsoldering everything, I
measured all the wires. They seemed OK. Same
with the switch, the pots, the cap, and the output
jack. After repeating all the checks again,
I decided to reinstall everything and exchange
one part after another to track down the faulty
piece. After carefully reassembling all the guts,
I was hit between the eyes: I put the pickguard
on our test Strat and it sounded rich and beautiful—
simply stunning. I tried to replicate the
problem several times but failed. The guitar
sounded great, and I had no clue why.
I compared the wiring and the arrangement
of the parts with the pics I took several times,
but it was all identical. I even marked all the
wires to put them in the same place again.
Well, such things happen from time to time. The
most important thing was that the failure was
gone, which would guarantee me a satisfied
customer. But the obscure phenomenon bothered
me. So I let it cool down for a few days
and then carefully compared everything with
the pictures again. And there it was: I hadn’t
noticed it before—because it shouldn’t make a
difference—but I had installed the tone cap face
up (so you can read what is printed on it, which
makes things easier because you can clearly
see the value). In the original configuration, the
same cap had been installed face down, so it
was 180 degrees reversed. I didn’t pay attention
to this fact because Orange Drop caps are
film/foil caps and don´t have an orientation like
electrolytic caps. So the way they’re installed
should not make a difference in tone. Since
this was the only noticeable difference I could
detect, I decided to test my own wits one more
time. I reversed the cap the way it was originally
installed, and I could hardly believe it: I plugged
the guitar in and the average tone was back! It
was like the life had been sucked out of it again.
An Orange Drop in the Forensics Lab
I wondered if the cap was faulty, so I tested
it with a DMM and a scope but couldn´t find
a problem. I handed the cap to a friend of
mine who works at a test lab at the local
university, and he did several intensive tests
but couldn´t find anything unusual. It was in
perfect working condition.
To find out how to avoid this same problem
with your tone caps, stay tuned for next
month´s column.
Until then, keep on modding!
Dirk Wacker
Dirk Wacker lives in Germany and has been addicted to
all kinds of guitars since the age of 5. He is fascinated by
anything related to old Fender guitars and amps. He plays
country, rockabilly, surf, and Nashville styles in two bands,
works regularly as a studio musician for a local studio,
and writes for several guitar mags. He is also a hardcore
DIY-er for guitars, amps, and stompboxes, and he runs an
extensive webpage—
singlecoil.com—on the subject.