Guitar tone pot and cap combination for metal tone?

[ubaid88]

What combination of caps and pot for guitar tone knob you guys prefers for heavey metal tone? I want this for bridge humbucker.

[Minion]

My personal oppinion is that all passive tone controlls suck , Litterally , they don"t add anything in the way of tone , they suck the tone and totally destroy the sound especially a one knob tone controll, You are not going to find many metal guitarists that actually use there tone knob (why should they , they make the guitar sound worse not better) .... so the best tone controll is no tone controll .......

[DDD]

I have mentioned that adding about 500 pF cap in parallel with my bridge humbucker makes the sound much more "metallic".
The whole chain is: 6 Henries humbucker pickup - 10 feet cord (appox. capacitance is 500 pF) - 470 pF cap to the ground at the stompbox input. I.e. there's about 1 nF totally to the ground.
I think there's some resonance emphasizing some "useful" frequency.
Try some caps of 150-1000 pF and you'll definitely find what you're looking for.

[Brymus]

I agree with Minion NO tone control at all is best for Metal.
Setting an ax up for Metal ,I would suggest your favorite high output  humbucker.
A 500K or 1M volume pot of good quality,(I like a 24mm size pot over the 16mm ones for the feel),and a good star grounding scheme.
Proper shielding,and whatever PU switching floats your boat.
I recently shielded the cavity of my friends Strat clone,and added a treble bleed cap.
It made a HUGE difference in the sound.
It is now so quiet you cant tell its plugged in.
The treble bleed...well I still havent decided if I like it or not,he did and thats all that mattered.
But I definetly wouldnt do it to my ax that was meant for Metal only.

[ubaid88]

Thanks guys. I intend to use that guitar for playing metal only. That guitar is already shielded. Any thing else that can done guitar other this or thicker strings? Should i add an buffer or internal preamp for for more hot output ?

[Sofl]

I think that an onboard buffer makes a perceptible improvement to the tone of a guitar. It helps preserve your treble, and negates the usage of cheaper quality cables. It doesn't "amplify" your sound, but it does make it a little louder because of how it preserves your high end. I use an onboard buffer on my guitars that don't have active pickups.

EDIT: (too early in the morning for me to be ranting/on a soapbox... sorry)

Gibson wiring, 0.047 uF iirc. I remember that my volume knob is 1 Meg, and I think my tone knob is 500k. The 1meg is important to me... between that and the onboard buffer preamp I get a pretty decent amount of treble, so I like the flexibility of rolling it off when I want to. I really like that round, fat jazz tone for my clean riffs, and I like my chord strumming to be a little more sparkly, and I think this helps. I still rely more on my rig to get me my tones than my guitar, aside from having higher output pickups (ie Seymour Duncan Alternative 8 in the bridge).

AFAIK, Gibson wiring doesn't roll off treble until you want it to. I could be wrong in this, but I certainly prefer Gibson wiring to Fender wiring. It also has that nice fat sound when you roll it back just a little. I do not have a treble bleed cap.

I also like to have EQ on top of that (rackmount EQ especially) in terms of sculpting my tone. I think that a healthy amount of EQ is more significant than an exact value of tone cap (or lack thereof) as long as your high end isn't completely rolled off.

My two cents,


Sofl

[Minion]

+1 - for the onboard buffer , The ones I put in my guitars have gain but they really do help bring the guitar foreward , a clearer tone and a punchier sound , a 1000% improvement from what my guitar sounded like stock (a cheapo ESP) , I was actually going to return it because it sounded so bad but I thought I would try a simple on board preamp circuit I put together and it made the guitar from sounding like ass to sounding bad ass ..... since then I have built and installed them in probably 30+ Basses and guitars for friends and for friends of friends and every one of them thought it was a huge improvement in sound .......


Cheers

[ubaid88]

Guys can u suggest any buffer schematic for humbucker? I think i may need to change values according to pickups impedance.

[Minion]

This is the one I use , It has quite a bit of Gain as it is , so if you want to be just a buffer ( I like the Gain cuz it adds a bit extra signal to overdrive the preamp tubes) you have to change the Gain set resistors so it is Unity gain .....





Cheers

[ubaid88]

Thanks buddy.

[Renegadrian]

I agree with Minion NO tone control at all is best for Metal.

I definitely agree too!!!

[newfish]

I agree with Minion NO tone control at all is best for Metal.

I definitely agree too!!!

Definately.

I added a bypass switch on my guitar recently, allowing both volume and tone pots to be taken out of the circuit.
Even without any on-board pre-amps or whatever, the top end really shines through without any pots being connected.

0.02

[bancika]

I saw somebody modding the tone pot so that it's out of the circuit when maxed. It's not very easy though, you have to open the pot, cut the conductive material very close to the input lug (IIRC), but it seems like a nice idea. I saw some fenders have that kind of pot out of the factory...

[newfish]

...or use a DPDT push/pull pot for your tone pot.

Saves drilling an extra hole.

[Brymus]

I agree with Minion NO tone control at all is best for Metal.

I definitely agree too!!!

Definately.

I added a bypass switch on my guitar recently, allowing both volume and tone pots to be taken out of the circuit.
Even without any on-board pre-amps or whatever, the top end really shines through without any pots being connected.

0.02

I had thought about doing that.
Aside from more high end is there a noticable boost ?
Enough to use for leads ?
When playing Metal my volume is generally maxed all the time any way.
I like the push/pull pot idea for bypassing.

[Renegadrian]

Nikki Sixx has a on/off switch instead of the volume on his basses...

[petemoore]

Should i add an buffer or internal preamp for for more hot output ?
 use the push pull DPDT pot.
 Build in a box first, Breadboard or something, the only things between pickup and booster in either case [box or onboard] is cable and whatever else is in the guitar, iow having it on the floor [table?] to see what sounds what.
 SWTC
 And there was also another tone control option bouncing recently, also with treshtalk about the full on or somewhat dull nature of guitar tone knobs, it looked like something of possible cool use, especially applicable for those who never adjust their tone knobs.
 I find little use for them with my guitar, 500k volume pot w/HF bypass freq-pacitor, the highs 'rise out of the mud' [passively] as their content becomes more of the output signal [big resistance across the audio path of the pot sees easy path for HF's through the bypass cap], makes the 8-10 on knob-dial frequency and volume responsible.  
 So then you take your tone control and plan:
A Preset the onboard booster 'mild' so the volume control [pregain between Pu and circuit] doesn't blast 10x when the boost is pulled on [with the PP/DPDT pot].
B Dump the PU output into the booster and use the DPDT to do some type of tone/volume or other duty, along with the V and T knob positions.
C anything else that these switch and adjust components could reasonably support.
 I like havin' just passive source output [powered by strings only] on these guitars mosly though, I have 2 x 100k DPDT push pull pots here.

[jayp5150]

Speaking of onboard buffers, has anyone ever dug into the CAE CB2? I can't seem to find any pertinent info on it anywhere (just what's on their website).

[newfish]

I agree with Minion NO tone control at all is best for Metal.

I definitely agree too!!!

Definately.

I added a bypass switch on my guitar recently, allowing both volume and tone pots to be taken out of the circuit.
Even without any on-board pre-amps or whatever, the top end really shines through without any pots being connected.

0.02

I had thought about doing that.
Aside from more high end is there a noticable boost ?
Enough to use for leads ?
When playing Metal my volume is generally maxed all the time any way.
I like the push/pull pot idea for bypassing.

No massive boost, just a little more 'shiny' top end.
You *could* use this mod as a lead / rhythm setup if you were prepared to have your guitar's volume turned a little for rhythm, then pulling the DPDT Pot would give you instant full volume.
Trouble then is that you're not pushing your amp as hard for the rhythm sections - and as a result are probably losing some of the 'crunch' in your sound.

Maybe best to have a boost / pre-amp pedal after all.