post your favorite tone control!

[ninjaaron]

I'm building a dirt box and I'm looking for ideas to steal.

(but seriously, I am)

[Andi]

Tweaked BMP. I forget the values but it ends up with a narrowish notch in the middle.

[ninjaaron]

Tweaked BMP. I forget the values but it ends up with a narrowish notch in the middle.

I'm thinking about a BMP derivation. I kinda want it to have a slight mid boost no matter when I set it, however, so I will have to tinker.

I'm also considering ripping the tone stack off the DLS and seeing how that works

[Derringer]

here's how you can boost the BMP tonestack mids
http://www.muzique.com/lab/tone3.htm

Thank you Mr. Orman wherever you are

you might like a Baxandall design too if you're looking for mid-boost ability

My favorite tone control .. the SWTC

[John Lyons]

+1 forMark Hammer's Stupidly Wonderful Tone Control (SWTC)
Basically just a high-pass filter but with very little volume interaction.

John

[Vitrolin]

have anyone tried the AMZs SWFTC2
http://www.muzique.com/lab/swtc.htm
well i imagine that in overdrive/distortion/fuzz circuits the treble boost feature would be quite useless/anoying due to the harmonics multiplication.

[Derringer]

yup ... I've used it (SWTC2). It does EXACTLY what it's designed to do ... and does it well.

[mth5044]

SWTC rules. You could give the tonemender a whirl too, then play around with some values.

[ninjaaron]

I'm gonna go ahead and bump this. Great responces so far. I'm looking into all of these. Great thread, if I do say so myself. 

[Mark Hammer]

I don't think there is any "best" tone controls, and even mere "favourites" will vary depending on what they are being used for.  The aforementioned SWTC is very useful for shaving off some of the hair of a distorted sound so that it is reasonably well-matched to the bypass tone, with respect to treble.  But it is not intended to provide broad tonal change of the sort that might constitute a "personality change".  There, the BMP control, and all its variants, provide something more drastic.   Also worth looking into is the variable scoop, based on the midscoop filter found on the Superfuzz and assorted Shin-Ei distortions.  Finally, the "Contour" control, found in some Marshall products is also a very flexible control producing lots of different "characters".

Where the SWTC can be configured to eat up very little signal, unfortunately the other types tend to be signal-gobblers, bleeding much off to ground to do what they do.  Happily, that can be compensated for by either starting out with a hot signal, or by adding a gain recovery stage (as the BMP does).  So, workable, but you have to plan for it.

[oddist]

Here's one I've been fooling around with.  Works nice with light to medium overdrives.
At one end, the tone control passes a LPF shelving type filter, which is nice because it keeps a fair amount of high end
will cutting out some fizziness.  The pot itself is part of a much lower tuned LPF, and acts to pan between both. 
See what you think.

[oddist]

http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php/v/Schematics-etc/ToneControl.JPG.html

[punkin]

+1 for the tone mender.

[rnfr]

i really like the tone control in this circuit.  i lifted it from the supro thunderbolt.  it goes from nice full midrange, to very thin, to very fat.  a lot of versatility in one knob.

[ninjaaron]

i really like the tone control in this circuit.  i lifted it from the supro thunderbolt.  it goes from nice full midrange, to very thin, to very fat.  a lot of versatility in one knob.

What circuit?

[blueduck577]

i was thinking about the big muff this afternoon. suppose we took a big muff tone stack, modified it for flat mids, but then stuck a boss mt-2 mid control after it?  i think it might be something worth looking into, being able to scoop/boost the mids exactly how much you want, at whatever frequency you want.

[Gila_Crisis]

oncee i built a OLC  Orange Peel, which features this tone control:


i like how it works

[ayayay!]

oncee i built a OLC  Orange Peel, which features this tone control:


i like how it works

That looks very interesting indeed.  But does it make the two tone knobs somewhat interactive when one or the other of the knobs is at it's extreme left or right? 

[Earthscum]

Since this thread is going right now, any suggestions for a tone control to go between a first boost/gain stage and the next successive stages? I tried SWTC and SWTC2 straight off my bass, and it sucks too much juice and really dulls the entire circuit (same with my guitfiddle... tuned to Dflat). I also tried them after a boost/gain stage, and basically it was like an entirely different control... it was like all of the sweep was gone. All it did was simply DULL the highs.

Is there a fairly simple tone control that will do a notch boost/cut, notch frequency and width? That would be the best for me... I'm trying to basically get certain tones to clip harder than others, and am probably gonna use BMP or SWTC at the end for tone recovery or suppression.

I dig the SWTC's. They are nice and simple and don't require as much volume adjustment.

[ninjaaron]

Ok, thanks for all the replies. I think the SWTC will probably be best for what I'm doing at the moment. I'm still tinkering with bass controls and haven't found a great solution yet, but I'll come up with something... eventually...