Locating a Capacitor's Outer Foil Using an Oscilloscope

There is a lot of debate about having the outer foil of a capacitor oriented the correct way so as to minimize hum and interference that can affect the amps performance and tonal qualities.  I agree that it is probably a best practice to do so but not doing so is not going to kill the amp tone, usually.  It might be a little noisier and that CAN be detrimental to your guitar tone.  

I bought this used Hitachi V-509 oscilloscope on Craigslist.com for $50 and it has been a useful tool, especially now that many capacitor manufacturers do not mark the outer foil on their caps and if they do, a lot of times, it is incorrect.  

You need a scope that goes down to at least 5mV/DIV and I would prefer one with 2mV/DIV but they are usually more expensive.  You can barely read some larger capacitance caps with 5mV/DIV.

You can see in the video that most of the new caps I bought were 50/50 on which side was the outer foil lead.  The Jupiters seem to be marked correctly as well as the old yellow Astrons that came in the old Fender Tweed amps.  

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