Another thing I'd like to add to this thread is the importance of a shunt
resister to ground, near the pickup. I've done a lot of recording and tried
all sorts of things to get different sounds out of a variety of musical
instruments. If you think that having nothing at all between your pickup and
amp is a good idea... Well, consider this: a guitar pickup is a coil. It has
inductive reactance. This is the number one reason why guitar amp inputs are
usually very high impendence, like 100K ohms or more. Typical stereo
equipment inputs are 50K ohms or less. That's why a clean guitar signal into
a tape deck input sounds very fat and dull. Also note that a guitar amp is
not designed to make ordinary music program sound good. It is designed to
make a single guitar sound good and that might mean all sorts of bizarre
variations on the frequency response, via passive and active filters, tone
controls and clipping... Nothing to do with high fidelity! Back to the
point... If you want to use a naked pickup right into an amp, at least put a
250K ohm resister across it; right on the leads of the pickup itself. The
guitar cord you are using will have capacitance in it that might otherwise
create a very resonant system with the pickup coil. This can have the effect
of creating a HUGE peak in the extreme high end that can really be a pain
with the way it effects signal levels and direct recording.

~James. )

"ebyea" wrote in message
...
It's for a guitar tone control and I'd like to replace the little 0.1mF
marked 104 light dull brown about 3/8" circular cap with a paper in oil
which I happen to have or a hovland or something of a bit more quality.
Would there be any loss of signal using a different type of capacitor
or is a cap a cap and all that matters is the rating and that the volate
meets or exceeds the requirement?