Marshall / Fender Tone Stack Pot Orientation

[JJPJ83]

This is my first post. Anywhere.

I am trying to understand the Marshall Tone Stack. I've seen a lot of examples online and my question concerns the position of the Pots, specifically the Bass. Some are reversed but claim to have the same effect. (From Top to bottom: Treble 3 2 1 / Bass 1-2 3 / Mid 1-2 3) I've wired it up all sorts of ways and found how I would orientate the Pots, but they differ from most common examples I've seen (ie. Duncan Calculator, Marshall Gov'nor / Shred Master). I understand R/C and C/R filters, series and parallel R and C. But it's all making me cross-eyed.

I've searched this forum for an answer but haven't found one yet. Anyone have any insight in to this? Thank you in advance.

[Mark Hammer]

This is far from a complete explanation, but maybe a few bits will help.

Think of the Treble pot as being a bit like the Big Muff, or better yet, the Foxx Tone Machine, tone control.  It pans between the signal available via a small-value cap (<1nf), and the signal available via a larger value cap.

The bass and mid pots, in conjunction with the larger caps, form a sort of lowpass filter, bleeding off highs and mids to ground.  The more is bled off to ground, the less bass and mids, and the less signal overall.

So, you need to orient your bass and mid pots such that rotating them clockwise reduces bleedoff.  In other words, their resistance needs to get bigger the more clockwise you go.  How you or the specific circuit, uses the various terminals on the pot is up to you, but the basic principle is that, whatever terminals you use, total pot resistance gets larger when going clockwise.

[JJPJ83]

That's what I thought. I have my Bass 3-2 connected to Treb 1 so that as the Bass rotates clockwise, I have the entire Bass Resistance from Treb 1 to Mid R/GND. Again, I don't understand why there are schematics that show the opposite. But I am going to leave it like this since it works and does what I want - the other golden rule. Thanks for your help.

[pappasmurfsharem]

That's what I thought. I have my Bass 3-2 connected to Treb 1 so that as the Bass rotates clockwise, I have the entire Bass Resistance from Treb 1 to Mid R/GND. Again, I don't understand why there are schematics that show the opposite. But I am going to leave it like this since it works and does what I want - the other golden rule. Thanks for your help.

Sometimes they are just reversed to make the connections prettier when viewing the schematic . But from top to bottom it generally is 3.2.1 3.2.1 3.2.1