If you read my recent post about tone capacitors you know there are three vintage capacitors that are very highly regarded for their tone, the Sprague Black Beauty, the Sprague Bumblebee, and the Mullard Tropical Fish, and they represent a sort of 'holy trinity' of tone for electric guitarists, as well as being at least partly responsible for the rich, musical tone, of some of my favorite vintage vacuum tube audio gear.

Sprague Black Beauty capacitors: Among guitarists, vintage Sprague Black Beauty capacitors are known for giving that delicious rich warm tone to vintage Gibson Les Paul guitars, by damping down the high-frequencies in a way that results in tone with a softer, smoother, warmer, and sweeter presentation. Similarly, the Sprague Black Beauty  smooths out the bass frequencies, and together the effect is to give a rich, warm, darkish, beautiful tone.  They are called Black Beauty capacitors for a reason, because they imbue the tone with a dark, rich, smooth, and beautiful sound. At least that's the lore around the vintage Sprague Black Beauty capacitors. Reportedly, there are two styles of vintage Sprague Black Beauty capacitors, those that were paper in oil, and those that were Mylar film and aluminum foil.

Sprague Bumblebee capacitors: Possibly the most famous tone capacitor among guitarists, are the Sprague Bumblebee capacitors, so named for their colorfully yellow & red striped black bodies. The Bumblebee capacitors are said to have all the good qualities of the Black Beauty capacitors, with their rich & mellow highs and lows, while delivering an intensely rich & colorful midrange tone. As with the Black Beauty capacitors, there were apparently two styles of vintage Sprague Bumblebee capacitors, paper in oil, and  Mylar film and aluminum foil.

A quad of vintage Sprague Bumblebee capacitors, with an Arizona Capacitor for scale. Thank you, Yves!

Mullard Tropical Fish capacitors: Mullard Tropical Fish capacitors are polyester film capacitors, which guitarists describe as having 'fat' tone, being punchy, and sounding 'big'. Like the Sprague tone capacitors they are said to have a mellowing effect on high frequencies.

My MX110Z came to me with a pair of 0.22uF Mullard Tropical Fish capacitors replacing the pairs of 0.1uF capacitors at C93 & C95 and C94 & C96. I don’t know if this was done at the factory in later production, or if Terry DeWick put them in when restoring my MX110Z. What I do know is that my MX110Z with the Mullard Tropical Fish doing duty at at C93 & C95 and C94 & C96 sounded really, really, good, and had that 'British fineness of tone' that Yazaki-san likes to attribute to vintage Mullard vacuum tubes.

Vintage McIntosh MX110Z.

We found out that is was extremely difficult to improve upon Mullard Tropical Fish capacitors during our MX110Z capacitor adventure, and I wanted to find out for myself if my speculation was true, and that those Tropical Fish capacitors were a big part of the reason my MX110Z was sounding so incredibly musical. The problem was that one of the Mullard Tropical Fish we took out of my MX110Z fell apart on extraction, so we couldn't reverse what we'd done to give it another listen to test my theory.

Mullard Tropical Fish capacitors.

So those Tropical Fish, and the reading I have been doing, has made me want to try examples of those vintage tone capacitors in my vintage McIntosh MX110Z tuner-preamplifier for a while now. I am not saying you should try these vintage tone capacitors in your audio gear, or that vintage tone capacitors are the holy grail for audio gear like they are for guitars, but I thought it would be fun and illuminating to compare those highly regarded vintage tone capacitors, to superb modern examples of capacitors, like those from Arizona Capacitors, which are Mylar film, paper, and aluminum foil in oil, capacitors (Green Cactus & Blue Cactus), or paper and aluminum foil in oil, capacitors (Red Cactus), which is somewhat of a variation on a theme of those highly regarded vintage Sprague Black Beauty & Bumblebee capacitors.

Oh, another interesting tidbit of wisdom about these vintage tone capacitors from guitarists is that if you want to fully realize the full tonal palette they are capable of, then you need to also use them with vintage style wire, which is a cloth covered wire with tinned copper conductors. This should sound very familiar to those of you who have experienced the charms of vintage Western Electric WE16GA wire, with its fabric covering and tinned copper conductors.

WE16GA.

Well, as I had mentioned in a previous post, I had ordered some Mullard Tropical Fish capacitors, but FedEx lost them. Well, today their replacements showed up (photo above), courtesy of Nick at HiFi Collective in the UK (Thanks, Nick!).

Yves Beauvais at Vintage Vacuum Audio very kindly sent me a quartet of vintage Sprague Bumblebees to try in the MX110Z, which you can see in the photo above.

So the MX110Z vintage capacitor adventure fun & games are about to begin!

Thanks for stopping by!