- This one is EVERYWHERE - from people selling Vintage capacitors, to companies selling their own modern “inspired by” ones, you’ll see all kinds of folks trying to discredit modern brands, saying things like "vintage is ALWAYS so much better" or “they don’t make them like they used to!” But why are they so dominant in the wiring world? For a couple reasons: 

1) Placebo marketing works,  and 2) most people don’t actually understand why a vintage cap may sound different from a modern version. 

When people say they do not make them like they used to, they are technically correct. Modern brands can make a way more accurate capacitor, than our even recent ancestors. What do we mean by that? The way a capacitor sounds is determined by the exact value the capacitor reads. Simple enough. But capacitors have a variance between what they are supposed to read and what they actually read. For example, a Modern "Orange drop" reads within -/+ 10% of the rated value.  That means a 0.022uf Orange drop is going to read anywhere between 0.020uf-0.024uf. 

That’s a relatively small range of passive variance, small enough that you’d never notice a difference. Vintage manufactured components couldn’t come close to that. Your average vintage high end cap was rated for -10%/+80%, so that same 0.022uf cap reads anywhere from 0.020uf-0.040uf, which is a huge noticeable difference in sound. Anything over 0.030uf and you are talking about a completely different tone control sound.  Want to learn more? Click this hyperlink text!