"Permanent" treble cut on a bridge pickup

[praxis]

Hi all,

I'm new to the boards; this is my first post here after lurking for a while. There seem to be some very clever and creative folks here, for sure, so this seems a good place to hang out!

As to my question, I read through a bunch of threads here and on other forums, and I couldn't find quite what I was looking for.  So...

I have a 2 pickup guitar, with Firebird pickups, 3-way selector, master volume, master tone, 250k pots. I wired the tone control with a 6.8nF cap, as I find low value caps a lot more usable, given how I play.

 The bridge pickup sounds great with the tone control from about 3 to about 7. Above that, it's just too bright. The neck pickup, though, sounds good through the whole range of the tone control.

I have 2 solutions in mind:

1. Wire a very small value cap from the bridge pickup switch lug to ground, to approximate "7" on the tone control. I'd have to do some trial and error for cap values.

2. Create a second tone control, again attached to the bridge pickup switch lug, but using a cap and a trim pot. Once I get the bridge tone dialed in, call it a day and tape the trim pot to the bottom of the control cavity. Still some trial and error, but simpler than option 1.

With either option, I'd leave the current master tone just as it is, so it would continue to affect both pickups. The bridge pickup would always have a bit of high end roll off, though, which sounds perfect to me.

I'm concerned that option 2 might present some issues, though, because in essence, the bridge pickup would have two tone controls. I'm not sure how well they would work together. Am I overthinking this?

What do you all think? Door #1? Or Door #2?

Thanks!

[JohnH]

Hi praxis

If 7 on your tone pot is the brightest you want, then at that setting the tone control is much more about the resistance of the pot than it is about the tone cap. Probably at 7, on a 250k pot, the pot is at around 130 to 140k.

If you put an extra resistor across the tone pot (same two lugs as are currently wired), you could make that setting the max setting. In theory, a resistor of about 300k will make a 250k pot look like it's at 7. The nearest common values are 270k or 330k. But if youd like to experiment, you could use a 500k trim pot.

But, given that you don't want to affect the neck tone and there's only one tone pot, instead, hard-wire the added resistor across the bridge pickup. It will do virtually the same effect on tone and affect only the bridge. No need for an extra cap, though there'd be no harm done if you added one in series with that resistor.

[sumgai]

praxis,


Hi, and to The NutzHouse!


John covers it, with one slight omission - what happens to your tone when both pickups are on? That will be up to you and your ears - does the new mod sound OK in the Middle position? If not, let us know, there are ways to cure that. 

HTH





sumgai

[praxis]

Thanks for the replies. The trim pot idea seems like a good option -- I can wire it in with a few inches of lead, and leave it outside the control cavity while I adjust it. Then cram it in there when I'm satisfied.

I'm going to give it a go! Once I have it sorted, I'll give a good listen to the middle position and see what I think.

[tubejockey]

If you're already playing around with smaller tone caps, you have likely already discovered how the resonant peak shifts down when the tone pot goes to 1.  6.8nF is a favorite of mine as well.  I like to hand select my tone caps by ear, but with most pickups I usually settle on something between 6n8F and 10nF.  That shift that happens makes the pickups sound like a fatter version of themselves when the cap is selected accordingly. 

I have never wired in what you described permanently, but I did put a small cap on in one position of a freeway switch, it works great.  Happy hunting.