I m not saying i like the orange drop better than the pio.
Ceramic vs paper in oil caps.
But for that moron to steal my cap and replace it and for me to never notice must mean that the difference is negligible at best.
Paper in oil or pio caps are just one variety of capacitor.
Pio caps were used in the les pauls of the 50 s and many appreciate their tonal qualities over more modern capacitors.
They still have the kraft paper in oil construction like the vintage russians but these are hermetically sealed metal tubes with glass ends so the value will not drift over time.
Others are made out of mylar ceramic etc.
Briefly a capacitor in the context of musical electronics consists of two plates of conducting metal separated by an insulating layer called a dielectric for example if you took two rolls of aluminum foil and unrolled them sandwiching a layer of paper between that would make a capacitor.
These caps were filled with paper in a special oil inside of bakelite bodies with the original nema color codes printed on them this is how many resistors are still printed.
I bought a bunch of vintage paper in oil caps.
Truth be told i don t like one more than the other because i can t tell a difference.
A cap lets the tone control roll off the treble response progressively warming the tone.
Capacitors are energy storage devices that filter the high frequencies.