Ok, I'm in over my head here.

[Taylor]

I have this thing that I'm putting together with various circuit building blocks. I have no trouble putting the individual mini-circuits together, it's just the combining that I'm having trouble with. I've got part of it all figured out, so if someone could help me go from here, it would be awesome.

Right now I'm trying to connect a microphone preamp to a simple tone control (a pot and a cap). I have positive and negative leads from the mic preamp. I think the positive goes to the middle lug of the pot, and the right lug connects to the cap, which is soldered to the pot case and goes to ground. But where does the negative lead of the mic preamp go?

[bkanber]

In general, we think of positive as "carrying the signal" and negative as ground. If you have only two leads coming out of the preamp, then the positive (signal) goes to the pot and the negative goes to ground.

And yes, positive goes to the middle lug, and the end lug connects to a cap which goes to ground. Also note that your output is the middle lug of the pot (ie, the positive from the preamp. Tone control rides in parallel.)

If you have any other confusions, don't be afraid to ask.

Burak

PS: This was the first schematic I could find of your simple tone control:
http://www.guitarnuts.com/wiring/voltonecon.php

It's halfway down the page. The top horizontal line is the signal (positive), the bottom horizontal line is ground (negative). The left side labeled input is the output of your preamp, and the right side labeled output is connected to whatever you're connecting this to.

[Taylor]

Awesome; thanks very much, and congrats on getting into Cooper Union.