What type of capacitor should be in a 60's Thunderbird II???

Bionic-Joe · December 13, 2011, 11:48:26 PM

My 65 Reverse T bird has 2 caps....each is .027 50V. My 68 NR has one. Anybody know what it is supposed to have??? thanks

exiledarchangel · December 14, 2011, 01:22:11 AM

How are those 2 caps connected? If they are soldered in parallel, somebody done it because he hadn't a .047 handy (old nasty trick).
There should be a .047 there.

Bionic-Joe · December 14, 2011, 05:41:09 AM

Wow!!! Well....When I turn the tone to 0....The bass has this incredible Low fat sound....almost like Jack Bruce...almost EBO =ish.

dadagoboi · December 14, 2011, 06:01:29 AM

My '64 II has the 2 cap setup. They appeared to be original when I got the bass so I left them. They're wired parallel and work fine.

Bionic-Joe · December 14, 2011, 06:13:54 AM

Hey Carlo....are they also, .o27 50V as well???

dadagoboi · December 14, 2011, 08:07:22 AM

Pretty sure they are. Here's mine, the bass is a little difficult to get to at the moment.

and here's another '64 from Ebay a while back...look close!

chromium · December 14, 2011, 08:44:06 AM

Probably a case of Gibson sharing the guitar parts drawer - rather than stock .047s separately for bass they could make their own larger value cap this way, and get better bulk pricing on the .027s. I'd expect a similar sound if you used a single 0.054mfd cap there.

Bionic-Joe · December 14, 2011, 01:13:02 PM

Thanks!!! I'll try it!!

exiledarchangel · December 14, 2011, 02:59:23 PM

You can experiment with even bigger caps like .1 for extra chunkyness, sky is the limit here.

Bionic-Joe · December 15, 2011, 12:14:17 PM

Hey...anybody got 2 of these orange Sprague .027 50V caps???

Larry · December 15, 2011, 02:16:15 PM

If I look at the pictures as an electrical engineer I see that one of the caps is soldered to the case of the varistor but is touching a wire that looks like it comes from a connection to the bridge of the unit. The other cap is soldered to the same case but is also touching a black wire that looks like it goes to the ground pin of the jack plug. It could be that these two caps are some kind of surge protection or something. But they deffinately form two different circuits.

dadagoboi · December 15, 2011, 03:10:57 PM

Quote from: Larry on December 15, 2011, 02:16:15 PM
If I look at the pictures as an electrical engineer I see that one of the caps is soldered to the case of the varistor but is touching a wire that looks like it comes from a connection to the bridge of the unit. The other cap is soldered to the same case but is also touching a black wire that looks like it goes to the ground pin of the jack plug. It could be that these two caps are some kind of surge protection or something. But they deffinately form two different circuits.

The black wires are part of the same ground circuit as the bridge wire and pot cases. The other end of the caps are both soldered to the same lug on the tone pot. Except for the double caps it's a typical single pickup V/T setup.

Bionic-Joe · December 17, 2011, 04:27:04 AM

NOw my Amp guy tells me that they are .02.

exiledarchangel · December 17, 2011, 06:53:29 AM

Not big difference. If you check a pile of .027 caps, some will be .02, others .03, some maybe higher/lower. Only a small amount would be close to .027.

Bionic-Joe · December 17, 2011, 10:21:23 PM

Here's a pic of the exact capacitor I need. Need 2 of them.