Treble Bleed Post - Guitarnuts

[WGTP]

Found this post and it is very cool.  I have wondered about this for years.  

Of course you can always pick closer to the bridge.   

http://guitarnuts2.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=wiring&action=display&thread=5317

[jacobyjd]

Very interesting.

After experimenting with a few different treble bleed setups, I ended up settling on a .001uF cap, sans resistor. The end result makes it so the volume control mainly just rolls off the bass--kind of like the opposite of a standard tone control, but with the accompanying volume drop, which starts to noticeably occur around the halfway point, and continues until the sound is muted.

[blooze_man]

I ended up settling on a .001uF cap, sans resistor.

Same here.

[WGTP]

Sounds like it would be most effective on the neck pickup or with a Phat bridge humbucker.  I had always wondered what turning down the volume control did to the EQ. 

Looks like with or without a treble bleed, you can get different tones by turning your guitar up or down and changing the gain of your amp or pedal.   

I have noticed my self turning up the guitar and playing softly or turning it down and banging on it. 

[ayayay!]

I had been doing the 220k/.002uF cap in parallel on a 500k pot for a couple years on most of my guitars.  However one of them, my Yamaha I think, just didn't seem to have the proper output.  Seemed okay on the Tele and Les Paul. 

Anyway, I tried the 300k pots in my Les Paul and really liked them.  I think w/ just a .001 orange cap.  I figured I'd try it on my Tele too, and loved it.  So then I did it in my Strat and loved it.  I'm sold as a 300k  w/ cap guy now .  I think they're perfect for rolling off the volume just a little to clean it up, and great for volume swells. 

[Paul Marossy]

I ended up settling on a .001uF cap

That's what I always use. Credit goes to Craig Anderton, from his book called Do-It-Yourself Projects for Guitarists .

[jacobyjd]

I ended up settling on a .001uF cap

That's what I always use. Credit goes to Craig Anderton, from his book called Do-It-Yourself Projects for Guitarists .

Yup. The problem with doing this is that once you do it to one guitar, you have to do it to them all. Seriously. I don't know how people even use stock volume controls after that, unless they run through particularly bright amps.

[Paul Marossy]

I ended up settling on a .001uF cap

That's what I always use. Credit goes to Craig Anderton, from his book called Do-It-Yourself Projects for Guitarists .

Yup. The problem with doing this is that once you do it to one guitar, you have to do it to them all. Seriously. I don't know how people even use stock volume controls after that, unless they run through particularly bright amps.

Word.

[Mark Hammer]

I find there is far too much decontextualization of discussion about guitar electronics, and the result tends to be widespread misunderstanding, and often overselling the benefits or costs of this and that.

1) Loading effects depend on what you do with your controls.  Some folks leave the volume at max and never lower it except to say "Is that the phone?", or "What?" during practices.  In those instances, volume pot values, and their "match" to pickup type and tone objectives, matter because the loading effects of pot value are always in effect.  Other folks are dickering with volume pots almost as much as they pick, and that constant monkeying around has an impact on their tone.

2) There is a difference between trying to maintain constant tone - independent of volume setting - and simply getting different tones.  I like an over-valued bypass cap on my volume pot because it gives me bass cut.  Great for chickin-pickin.  Another player may have as their tonal objective simply being able to keep the same amount of treble in the signal at all volumes.  They are essentially aiming for achieving the Fletcher-Munson equal loudness curves with their volume pot.  Both are valid, but your specific objective determines what's right for you.

3) If a person played clean, clean, clean ALL the time, into a clean amp with max bandwidh, that'd be one thing.  But so many players (myself included) deliberately use harmonic distortion as a creative tool, and in those instances you don't want too much treble.  Loading becomes your friend, and also becomes the reason why so many SC players like a lower-value volume pot.

So, I think any discussion of on-board wiring of guitars, and component-value choices, necessarily begins with two fundamental questions:
a) What is it that you're trying to DO, much of the time?, and
b) What exactly are you using it with?

The obsession/curse that jacobyjd alludes to can be easily avoided by recognizing that guitar X is used for THESE purposes (e.g., for when I'm seriously delusional and I want to pretend I'm Brad Paisley) and guitar Y is used for THOSE purposes (e.g., when I want as warm and uncrisp a sound as I can get, in order to overdrive my Orange amp stack).

[joegagan]

bear with me any of you have heard me before, but i cannot tell you how useful a treble bleed on its own pot is ( i know it's been mentioned already)

the guy at guitarnuts has a nice idea with a dual gang, but i prefer my way , more variability for more circumstances, different amps, pedals, songs etc etc

( silver mica caps sound best in my tests)

[Paul Marossy]

bear with me any of you have heard me before, but i cannot tell you how useful a treble bleed on its own pot is ( i know it's been mentioned already)

the guy at guitarnuts has a nice idea with a dual gang, but i prefer my way , more variability for more circumstances, different amps, pedals, songs etc etc

( silver mica caps sound best in my tests)

That's a cool idea I haven't seen before.

[earthtonesaudio]

I find there is far too much decontextualization of discussion about guitar electronics, and the result tends to be widespread misunderstanding, and often overselling the benefits or costs of this and that.

1) Loading effects depend on what you do with your controls.  Some folks leave the volume at max and never lower it except to say "Is that the phone?", or "What?" during practices.  In those instances, volume pot values, and their "match" to pickup type and tone objectives, matter because the loading effects of pot value are always in effect.  Other folks are dickering with volume pots almost as much as they pick, and that constant monkeying around has an impact on their tone.

2) There is a difference between trying to maintain constant tone - independent of volume setting - and simply getting different tones.  I like an over-valued bypass cap on my volume pot because it gives me bass cut.  Great for chickin-pickin.  Another player may have as their tonal objective simply being able to keep the same amount of treble in the signal at all volumes.  They are essentially aiming for achieving the Fletcher-Munson equal loudness curves with their volume pot.  Both are valid, but your specific objective determines what's right for you.

3) If a person played clean, clean, clean ALL the time, into a clean amp with max bandwidh, that'd be one thing.  But so many players (myself included) deliberately use harmonic distortion as a creative tool, and in those instances you don't want too much treble.  Loading becomes your friend, and also becomes the reason why so many SC players like a lower-value volume pot.

So, I think any discussion of on-board wiring of guitars, and component-value choices, necessarily begins with two fundamental questions:
a) What is it that you're trying to DO, much of the time?, and
b) What exactly are you using it with?

The obsession/curse that jacobyjd alludes to can be easily avoided by recognizing that guitar X is used for THESE purposes (e.g., for when I'm seriously delusional and I want to pretend I'm Brad Paisley) and guitar Y is used for THOSE purposes (e.g., when I want as warm and uncrisp a sound as I can get, in order to overdrive my Orange amp stack).

The above text ought to be an automated reply whenever someone starts a thread asking "what value pots should I get for my guitar" or "what's the best treble bleed circuit" etc.  Well said.



Also, I noticed the guitarnutz topic does not mention what the amp's input impedance is.  I suppose I should just infer that it's a 1Meg carbon comp 1/2W resistor biasing a 1967 NOS 12AX7 with a gain of 25 and 16pF of Miller capacitance.  I mean, this is what everyone uses, right?

[Mark Hammer]

bear with me any of you have heard me before, but i cannot tell you how useful a treble bleed on its own pot is ( i know it's been mentioned already)

the guy at guitarnuts has a nice idea with a dual gang, but i prefer my way , more variability for more circumstances, different amps, pedals, songs etc etc

( silver mica caps sound best in my tests)

Something I experimented with, and confirmed the viability of, is a circuit equivalent to the tweed-style "Tone" control.  Do a search for a tweed Deluxe or Princeton schematic, and you'll see that Fender used a single pot while adjusts both treble cut and treble bypass.  The wiper of the tone pot goes to the input of the volume control.  One outside lug goes to a small-value cap used to bypass the volume, and the other outside lug goes to a larger value cap used to cut treble.  There are resistances placed in series with each cap, that functions in a reciprocal fashion.  Naturally, the more treble cut you ask for, the less treble bypass you get, and the more treble bypass you ask for, the less treble cut you get.  But that's pretty much what a person wants.

The trick is to have a pot taper, or adjustment range that works well.  Ideally, the tone pot would be in the 500k-1M range, with a parallel fixed resistor used on the treble bypass side to reduce the maximum resistance value it can take on.  You don't really need to add anything more than maybe 50k in series with the bypass cap, but the entire 500k-1M is useful with respect to adjusting how much treble you lose.  I just used a 1M pot I had handy, and couldn't even tell you what the taper was.  Some folks may find that a particular taper (e.g., reverse log) works best for them.

There are 2 things I like about this.  One is that it allows for engagement and defeat of the bleed/bypass arrangement without necessitating any routing or installation of extra stuff.  The other is that  it permits dialing in how much compensation you want, such that aperson can get a modest compensation, or the overcompensation I described earlier, which can serve as a de-facto bass cut.

[joegagan]

 i see what you are going for , mark. makes sense.

having lived with the above arrangement on my numero uno tele for 8 yrs now ( lots of recording time, a little stage time),
i still prefer having the tone control split out into its own control as well.

my tele has the normal  tone/ vol, plus the above referenced treble bleed control added. the versatility of cut and bleed independent has been a blessing in many instances.

[blooze_man]

I've converted to the Mark Hammer method. It makes much more sense to me. Although I use another version (I think he posted on music-electronics-forum) where lug 1 has a .022uf to ground so you get variable treble bleed with the standard tone control.

[Mark Hammer]

I've converted to the Mark Hammer method. It makes much more sense to me. Although I use another version (I think he posted on music-electronics-forum) where lug 1 has a .022uf to ground so you get variable treble bleed with the standard tone control.

Guess I wasn't clear earlier.  This is the exact same thing.  The specific cap values may well be different than those on the amp schematics, simply because we use the tone control for different things on the amp and guitar, but the underlying principle is identical: treble cut in one direction, and treble compensation in the other.

[petemoore]

  Sounds like it would be most effective on the neck pickup or with a Phat bridge humbucker.
  Have had no regrets whatsoever with using the volume as a ~tone control that turns the bass and therefore overall volume down until about 8 where the overall volume change is only losing slightly more treble proportionately.
  Did that on a few of my guitars.
  The equation includes a lot of things, to disinclude some of them it's easy to focus only on the guitar control cavity. Works to some degree w/any PU/Vol Pot. above 250k gives the capacitor more R range to work with, finding the right values is close enough around .001, calculated to be what it is, or by ear. By ear is the long-way around because by the time say .0022uf has also been tried the trade-off values get fuzzy.
  Sufficed to say it's worth thinkering about adding the component position to the effect mod options.
  Otherwise dialing in and the related memory of knob increases the requirement for re-getting this or that tone out of what it does.
  Simple is into effect that goes into midrange 'clank' for me, if clean/bypass, clanktone, and distortion fuzz are possible with 1sw + volume knob it makes it pretty easy to keep track of 'what'. Otherwise it seems the volume knob 'can be' as in my case requiring rather precision tuning as the guitar output is pushed [ie have to hit a string and see what comes out, re-adjust once or twice]...I believe this could be avoided with 1 more component, a series stop resistor so the pot goes only to say 94% full on.
  Somtimes it's right at the bottom of a long post I get a rememberance/re-motivation of instigation. Such as remembering I was going to try different things 'there' until I got totally satisfied with 'it'...probably go throw in an...18k there, see about all the whats that can do withs for a good while.     

[WGTP]

I drew this up a while back.  The trim pot and cap socket can be used on whichever circuit you choose. 

http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php/v/WGTP/Treble+Bleed.GIF.html?g2_imageViewsIndex=1

[blooze_man]

I've converted to the Mark Hammer method. It makes much more sense to me. Although I use another version (I think he posted on music-electronics-forum) where lug 1 has a .022uf to ground so you get variable treble bleed with the standard tone control.

Guess I wasn't clear earlier.  This is the exact same thing.  The specific cap values may well be different than those on the amp schematics, simply because we use the tone control for different things on the amp and guitar, but the underlying principle is identical: treble cut in one direction, and treble compensation in the other.

Oops. My bad. I saw your reply to Joe's diagram and thought it was yours.

[aflynt]

I tried the single .001 last night, but didn't really like it. It just sounded too thin when rolled down. I then found this Excel spreadsheet where you can plug in different settings and see a graph of the frequency response at different volume control settings: http://www.harryj.net/voltone.xls. Lollar has a handy chart with all the DCR and Q values for their pickups, so I plugged in those values and played around with R and C values for the bleed circuit in the spreadsheet until I found something that had a fairly consistant curve as the volume rolled down. I wound up using a .001 cap in parallel with a 110k resistor. The result sounds perfect all the way down.

So my advice to anyone wanting to do this would be to play around with that Excel file and find the exact values that work with your setup.

-Aaron