Hi what are black beauty caps and why are they so expensive? 73 darryl

Old paper caps that are almost 100% guaranteed to be leaky. They have a hard plastic shell on them and if color coded with stripes are also known as bumblebees. They are expensive because guitar players with no talent think that they will magically make them rock stars.

Black Beauty cap
http://www.jvguitars.com/images/2%20Bla ... 20Caps.jpg

Bumblebee caps (mostly)
http://annarborguitarrepair.com/images/bbc1.jpg

Leaky , in the electrical sense, not physically.

When you find them in your old radios, leave the leads long when you cut them out. Put 'em on Epay. The most popular are the .022/400v the guitar guys use them in their tone circuit.
The leakge of an old cap supposedly makes their giutar sound better.

Just think though, when their guitars were new, the caps were not leaky and probably didn't have the sound they are looking for. I'd guess that installing modern caps would have the guitar sound like it did when new.

ROTFLMFAO!

Based on what we hear on the radio these days, how much talent can they need???



Larry

I can't comment on the no talent comment but when these caps are used in a guitar on the pick up tone circuits the small leakage would not matter, there is no HV DC at this point. A violin player can comment on the type of varnish used on the instrument so who am I to say these guys can have no opinion as to the caps in a guitar tone control circuit. How they sounded in the 1950's would be hard to compare to today since there are too many variables, like even the ears of a guy who was there, not even close to what he heard back then.

thanks for the info maybye that is why i cant get the right sound just kidding my problem is i have a little finger missing on left hand and cant cord 73 darryl

A missing finger never stopped Jerry Garcia!

Or just use a slide. Elmore James is hard to beat, and with that kind of talent I still prefer his version of Dust My Broom. Doubt he ever worried about caps.

I dunno, I gots the same ears as I did then,and '50's music still sounds good to me, eh eh!

These guys also focus on visual features of tubes including the shape of the bulb. the shape and color of the plate as well as what kind of tracks to getter left and who made it.

On the (slightly) more serious side, bumblebee caps were introduced by Sprague in the mid-1950s. They are paper capacitors in molded black plastic cases with colored stripes painted around them. The stripes are color coded to indicate the value, voltage rating, and tolerance of the cap. They were hearalded as being more moisture-proof and reliable than the previous cardboard and wax encased paper caps. Unfortunately, it did not work out that way. Many of the caps absorbed moisture and rapidly failed, sometimes blowing apart viciously. Almost none of the original bumblebees still extant today can pass a leakage test. However, vintage guitar affectionados and audio enthusiasts are now paying large sums of money for original bumblebees for equipment restorations. Usually they open the plastic cases, remove the original contents, then seal modern capacitors inside so the equipment will work properly.

The most valuable "bumblebee" appears to be the 0.022-uF, 400-volt variety, which was used in certain Gibson guitars. Gibson even issued reproductions of it.

Realizing that "bumblebees" had a poor reputation, Sprague improved the design and brought out what are known as "black beauties" in the late 1950s. Rather than stripes, these have the numbers printed on them. Other manufacturers brought out similar capacitors in red, white, green, as well as black cases. These later molded plastic capacitors were more reliable, and some types were still in production into the early 1970s. "Black beauties" and the similar versions often still work, but the cost of replacing tubes and other parts that could be damaged by a capacitor failure makes it prudent to change them regardless.