Any use for inductors?

[ljubljana]

Can an inductor in series with the rest of the electronics give any neat effect? I would assume it would give a spacey fade-in/fade-out type sound.  Shielding would be needed to prevent the inductor from adding noise, but I can't see any other problems.
Anyone tried it?  I would experiment, but I don't have a guitar I'm willing to test something like this on.

Thanks,
Graham

 

[blue313]

IIRC the Gibson M-III used one.  It seemed to be a kind of notch filter, but I can't say I played it for more than a few minutes.


Edit: found it  http://www.gibson.com/Files/schematics/M3schematic.PDF

 

[mayfly]

An inductor is just another tool in the electronics designer's bag of tricks.  You can certainly use them for filtering and other effects.  It's tricky to design them for passive guitars since you need to take the inductance of the pickups into account in your design.

 

[bob7point7]

I think the ES-355 Varitone circuit uses an inductor to create the variable notch filter, but it seems like many people bypass them. I had a passive mid cut that used an inductor in my Warmoth LPS for a while (I was hoping it would get me closer to a single coil sound when the pickups were split). I never did find a use for it, so I removed it and went with seperate neck and bridge tone knobs instead. Don't be afraid to experiment, and let us know if you come up with something!

 

[-CB-]

I have zero clue as to why folks bypass the VariTone, since the first position IS bypass anyway....

For guitar use, an inductor of about 1Hy to about 2.5Hy is a range to use.  Gibson seems to like using 1.8Hy and I agree with them when it comes to medium humbuckers such as they manufacture.  For single coils, P90's, hot humbuckers, etc... your results will vary.  I've got some Q-Filter inductors that are about 1.5Hy and about 2Hy and you can tell the difference.  So, value matters.

Speaking of Q-Filter - those are great since they're bi-wound and totally hum-free.

 

[ljubljana]

For some reason I was thinking in DC, so my original idea is kinda stupid in hindsight.

Filtering, on the other hand, could be cool. A band-stop filter to cut out the mids, but leave highs and lows, would be interesting to try.  I'm ordering a warmoth guitar soon, so once I get it I'll play around with it.

 

[-CB-]

You have to be a bit ticklish when making a notch filter.... the circuit is more critical to the impedance of the pickups, in order to get some interesting tones.

Gibson (Lawrence) used a 1.8Hy bi-wound inductor in the L6-s, and they have a decent mid cut on it that will roll off the mids, leave the highs, but eventually roll some highs as well.

Using the Q filter, on the LP BFG hot-wound P90 and BB#3, you get more mid roll off, an interesting tone.... and.... if you roll off the highs as well using the regular treble filter, you get this real nasal tone with snarl that sounds just like the Mutron sound (the chord doublets) at the end of "Killer Queen", except no Mutron is used.   Interesting, yes.  Useful... uh... you decide.

I used the same circuit in Vic's BFT (tele) and it worked ok.  In my BFT it didn't work quite as nice... go figure.  I may have to increase the inductance to get the tone... or just eliminate and go conventional on it.

Inductors are real fun.  Make a Varitone box and see how it works differently for every type of pickup.  Then switch in other inductance values, and have a real sweet little tone shaper similar to the R&B Tone Ranger that I designed some time ago.