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LF tone knob

dNA

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I'm wondering if it's easy and/or possible to make a passive bass rolloff knob for a guitar. Basically it'd be the inversion of a tone knob - it'd be a high pass filter instead of a low pass. Seems simple enough. But if i try to google "bass tone knob" guess what i find...
If anyone has done it, let me know how!
 
g&l's have this. the wire that goes to the volume pot from the switch goes to a tone pot instead. you will use the wiper and the lug that lands to the right if you look at it from the back and the lugs face up. one hot wire comes from the switch and another goes to the volume pot but it doesnt matter which goes to which lug you use on the tone pot. a capacitor (a good one, orange drop maybe, it is important for this type of control) goes from the wiper to the right lug. as you turn the knob clockwise it shorts the cap making it normal sounding, counter clockwise and you are in series with the cap cutting bass.

http://www.glguitars.com/schematics/Legacy_schematic_drawing.pdf
^directly from G&L, messy looking i know but it'll get you what you want.

you can use a resistor in parallel with the cap to limit the range.

option 2 is to get a Q-filter from bill lawrence, it normally works in a notch filter arrangement. in a notch filter a cap is series with an inductor to ground, the inductor being the Q-filter. capacitors pass highs but lows will see an impedance near infinite, so when shunted to ground the retain lows in the signal. inductors have near infinite impedence at high frequencies and so when shunted to ground you retain highs.. so the two wiring options using a Q-filter are to A) use a resistor in parallel to the cap as to limit the retention of the lows. 5-10k ohms works great. makes the guitar quack. can almost sound like a piezo system. or B) forgo the cap all together and run the Q-filter in series with a resistor atleast as big as the dc resistance of the pickup in place of a cap in a normal tone circuit. i haven't tried this but i expect it to cut the output quite a bit.

http://guitarsbyfender.yuku.com/topic/2992/t/Q-filter-What-does-it-do-exactly.html?page=2
^ these are some examples of posible circuits, even one that can be selected as a normal high cut via a switch.
 
http://accessories.musiciansfriend.com/product/Fender-TBX-Tone-Control?sku=361264&src=3WFRWXX&ZYXSEM=0&CAWELAID=26024070
:icon_thumright:

-Michael
 
Here's a prettier G&L schematic (this one's for a bass):

http://www.glguitars.com/schematics/L-1000_schematic_blockdiagram.pdf

It's just a cap and a pot in parallel inserted between the PU and the output.
 
word. you guys are great. I'm going to try this out as soon as I get the chance. I want to use it to thin out a humbucker for more open clean tones
 
dNA said:
word. you guys are great. I'm going to try this out as soon as I get the chance. I want to use it to thin out a humbucker for more open clean tones
You may want to look at a passive mid cut, then.
 
dNA said:
word. you guys are great. I'm going to try this out as soon as I get the chance. I want to use it to thin out a humbucker for more open clean tones

No problemo, dNA. Re: Humbuckers, you might wanna read that TDPRI link where a guy linked up concentric pots in a similar fashion to the way they were talking about modding the TBX pot, using different values so that when you had a centre/neutral position, the humbucker didn't sound like mud.

I've always thought that the Howard Roberts 3 pot configuration made more sense than what Leo had for the Strat, but I have also read that the bass tone control pot is not so effective. Haven't had the chance to try the Howard Roberts pot setup out on a  Strat yet (as master controls for all 3 pickups), but maybe one day I'll tinker around..
 
Well  a while back I had a guitar tech replace all the electronics in my archtop (at least one pot got fried from me doing a hackjob rewiring it) and he put all new stuff in there. He put caps for treble bleed on the volume and when I roll it back, it basically acts as a bass rolloff. I get some really nice clean sounds that way, but it's a bit too extreme and the volume drop makes it the kind of thing you could never use live.
it might just make more sense to get a very transparent EQ pedal, but that's obviously not as cheap as a couple electronic components
 
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