Which will be brighter?

[Switch]

Ok, another unanswered question about guitar electronics. I'm talking about 1 volume pot and 1 tone pot here.

>>
K, so I'm talking here about having both pots on 10. Now we all know that even on 10, pots still have an effect on the highs.

I've got a G&L Legacy (strat style) with a humbucker in the bridge. I want to know if there would be a difference between having a 250k volume and a 500k tone, as opposed to a 500k volume and a 250k tone. Which combination would roll off less highs? Would both options be the same? Let's assume I'm using a .022 cap on the tone.

If both options turn out to be too bright, obviously I'll have them both as 250k. The 3rd pot on my guitar is a chromacaster rotary switch, so worry not about the 3rd pot.

Fire away!!!!!!!!  :oops:

[Mark Hammer]

Really you want to ask this question over at the guitar tech forum at Ampage, but I'll bite anyways.

If you have a tone control to begin with, you will ALWAYS bleed treble.  The question is, how much, and starting from where?  Certainly, use of a lower value tone pot provides a lower impedance path to ground for treble, but if your tone cap was .001uf you'd hardly notice it, whereas if you had a .022uf cap you would very clearly notice the difference if you set the tone pot to max treble, and suddenly lifted the ground connection.

My advice is to select tonepot value based on how mute you want it at its dullest, and how bright you want it at its brightest.  If you want to be able to get a really blurry dull tone, and have no concerns about ever sounding like Mark Knopfler, then a .05uf cap and 250k may be just fine.  It will always leak a bit of treble but so what.  If you want to vary between a roundish sound and something fairly bright and crisp, then you will likely not want to go bigger than maybe .015uf, and will want a larger value tone pot, at least 500k, such that at max treble it sounds almost as if you've lifted the ground connection.  One meg would likely be better but that would leave a huge range where the tone control would change little.

Lately, I've been using a bidirectional tone control.  It's 1meg linear, with a small value cap (around 1500pf) between ground and outside lug A and a larger value cap (around .015-.022uf) between ground and outside lug B.  Wiper goes to the volume control.  Roll it one way and you just shave off some of the crispness, like buffing the edges with #200 sandpaper.  Roll it the other way and you get traditional dulling.  Set it in the middle and its like having a pair of 500k tone pots set to max treble.  Takes a bit of getting used to but works great, and helps out with "pinky wah" (simulating wah-like tone swells with your pinky finger) by concentrating more tonal change in less rotational arc.

[toneman]

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[Switch]

Cool cool, that's some good info. And nice idea with the tone pot, very crafty! Do you have a centre detent or just go by feel?

But back to the question, which combination would be brighter or duller?  

[sir_modulus]

I think he just answered that. Both and neither. It's up to the tonecap, and setup you use.

Cheers,

Nish

[Mark Hammer]

Cool cool, that's some good info. And nice idea with the tone pot, very crafty! Do you have a centre detent or just go by feel?

But back to the question, which combination would be brighter or duller?  

I *wish* I had a centre detent.  That would make life a whole lot easier.  Since it's on a cheap Tele clone, I use neither feel nor detent, but simply turn until the set-screw/indicator is just out of view, at which point I know it is somewhere in the middle.

If you will be using a .022uf tone cap, then the brightest sounding combination, assuming everything is maxed, would be the 250k volume pot and 500k tone pot.  In the opposite configuration (500k vol, 250k tone), I would personally predict too much upper treble loss from the low value tone pot and large value cap to be offset by a larger volume pot value.  In the first suggested arrangement, you may lose some crispness by means of a lower value volume pot, but at least your tone cap will be closer to being "out of circuit".  Put another way, unless you are looking at the difference between 100k and 1meg volume pots, whatever impact the volume pot value may have, will be overridden by the value of the tone cap.

[Mike Swan]

Very cool idea Mark! I'm going to try that out the next time I change my strings.

Now all I need is a pot/capacitor combo that will make me play like Knopfler.

[squidsquad]

Some may scoff...but I removed the tone pots from my strat...and I LOVE what I hear (thru my half deaf ears).  If it's too bright I turn down the amp treble.  I just never used my tone controls....and they DO suck highs.

[aron]

Fender has a "no load" pot that takes it out of the circuit when on 10.

[Cabezahead]

http://guitarelectronics.zoovy.com/product/CPNL1

Just googled it. That's pretty awesome.

Might have to snag a few.

-CH