Bass Cut tone pot - Please advise?

[Steve_Karl]

Hi there,
I want to generally use the idea from an other guitar circut with my existing wiring.
The G&L circut is obvious I think.
My existing wiring is faded a bit and the new addition is labeled.

The thing I don't like about the addition is that it forces all signal to go through the bass cut
where as I'd rather hope there's a way to wire it like the other tone pots ... how they aren't directly in line of the signal.

So my question is how do I do this the best way?

Thanks!

P.S. - The hole in the body for the pot is already there. I'm going to be removing the Graphtech Acoustaphonic Vol. saddles and preamp.
It's not working for me on a guitar with a Vibrato (Vs-100) bridge.

 

[mayfly]

Well,

Just looking quickly at that circuit, I'd say it's less disruptive to overall signal integrity than a regular tone control.  A regular tone control, even when turned full clockwise, will bleed a bit of treble from the signal.  This is because the cap is always in the circuit tied to ground; the pot varies the amount of resistance in series with that pot, but it's always connected to the hot lead through some resistance. 

The bass cut circuit that you posted is different.  When the pot is turned off the cap is completely shorted out and will have no effect whatsoever.  It only comes into effect when you turn the pot - then some of the signal is routed through that cap, which gives your simple single pole HPF.  But when it's off, it will have absolutely no effect.

If you like the sound, I'd do it and not worry about it.

 

[Cagey]

I agree with Mayfly. It doesn't really get any less intrusive than that.

What's wrong with your Acoustiphonic/VS100 installation? I have an installation exactly like that and it works fine. Doesn't sound like what I expected, but I haven't spent much time with signal processing yet.

 

[AirCap]

You might try getting a Fender TBX... It's a stacked pot that rolls off bass in one direction, and treble in the other. NO BATTERIES, and they are cheap - usually less than $20.

 

[Ace Flibble]

You might try getting a Fender TBX... It's a stacked pot that rolls off bass in one direction, and treble in the other.

That's not quite what a TBX does. From 0-49% it rolls off treble like a common 250k tone control; from 50-100% it does cut a little bit of bass but it also boosts treble beyond what you'd normally get, as it effectively is a 1meg pot for the midrange and a 'no load' pot for higher frequencies.

So simply saying that it rolls off bass is rather inaccurate. It's more that it rolls off bass in one direction, and the other direction rebalances both the treble and bass. Kind of similar to the EMG EXG control.



OP, the G&L circuit is fine and as 'transparent' as you can get. Remember that you can always use a 'no load' pot so you could click it out of the circuit, or you could simply use less-aggressive cap/resistor/pot values so the effect is simply always weak. In any case, the G&L style of wiring works as good as any passive bass cut can. If you want anything better, you'd really have to go active.

 

[Steve_Karl]

Thanks Everyone!
I'll get to it soon now that I know it's gonna work.

 

[Steve_Karl]

I agree with Mayfly. It doesn't really get any less intrusive than that.

What's wrong with your Acoustiphonic/VS100 installation? I have an installation exactly like that and it works fine. Doesn't sound like what I expected, but I haven't spent much time with signal processing yet.

It's ok ... but I was hoping to be able to wang it with the bar and it's just to noisy in the ultra lows when using the bar and also there's a very low *thud* if I pick at ever a moderatly strong level, even more so when finger picking.
Dampening the springs by filling them with strips of cloth helped a lot, but it's still there. It was outrageous before dampening the springs.
But remember, I'm always going direct and never using an amp.

I've got the same Acoustaphonic system in the nylon strung hard tail strat and don't have any of those problems.

And ... I was hoping to be able to replace my Ovation Adamas when recording acoustic steel string tracks but the Adamas just does a way better job and has a much meatier tone ... stronger fundamentals ... much more there to work with, and it's the best guitar neck and action I've ever owned, so the Adamas wins.

 

[Cagey]

I expected to hear a lot more "environmental" noise than I do from handling/picking/mechanical noise from the bridge/etc. I mean, the saddles are designed to hear vibration, right? So, I'm not surprised to hear that you're having trouble with it, I'm more surprised that I don't. Either that, or since I'm the one making the noise, my brain automatically filters it out as it occurs. I'll bet if I were to record it like you're doing, it would suddenly get obvious.

 

[rgand]

This is the way I wired my JM and it works really well. You should like the result. If you roll in both bass and treble bleeds at the same time, you get kind of an interesting nasal tone.

 

[Steve_Karl]

Bass tone pot is not yet installed ...

... but ... I took the graphtech saddles off and put the original VS-100 saddles back on
and got it all set up the way I like it ...

... and it's got a bit more upper mid range punch and ping now.
Just playing it direct into sound card > Marantz 1060 > Vintage Auratones (with a sub).
It's a little more "crunchy" sounding. I like!