No tone pot

[Ripper]

A single humbucker, and a single volume knob.

With no tone pot how would that sound?

Barry White low, or Bee Gee high?...or right about dead centre?

[Runewalker]

Classic EVH-o-caster. That's what Eddie did when he installed an Explorer humbucker in a Charvel bod. Incidentally EVH was a butcher on craftsmanship in his mods, but who cares, because he also butchered all concepts of guitar playing that came before him.

He obviously was not a member of GN2 (time space continuum problem), as he knew little about wiring and just had a vol control.

As to tone, that depends on placement. The closer to the bridge the more piecing, the further away the more mud. Also the articulation of you pup itself. Fewer winds and Alnico I or V yields more definition and clarity but less 'power' (in general). More winds and ceramic yields higher power, less definition (in general, and there are odd exceptions).

You prob will find a large significant number of players rarely use the tone control anyway, so you would just bow to conventional usage.

Also, few pots means less cumulative resistance and increase circuit conveyed brightness. The art here is choice of pup and position.

Get one of those bathtub routed strats, rig some rails in your pickguard toneplastic so you can slide the pup between the bridge and neck positions at will, and then you have a mechanical opposed to electronic tone control. Hey I like that!

(yes it has been thought of before).

[Runewalker]

deepblue said:

A single humbucker, and a single volume knob.

With no tone pot how would that sound?

Barry White low, or Bee Gee high?...or right about dead centre?

Uhhhh, Deep, dare I ask the type of wood for the pup's destination. Oh, never mind, not that again.

[Ripper]

Hey Rune...

As I stated before in another thread, I did just that ( humbucker, no tone pot ) years ago in the 80's with my Ibanez Blazer. The trouble is, I had only been playing guitar for a short time and had no clue about tone, or tweaking, or how the lack of tone pots would affect my sound.

So now thinking back all I can remember was my long hair and thinking I was more cool then
I actually was....I cannot remember the sound I achieved by altering my guitar.

Skip ahead to 2006.

Now my 12 year old daughter plays guitar. I bought her an Ibanez for about $300 Canadian.
Its an H/S/S ... So she never uses the single coil pups, so I told her id take them out, put in a much hotter humbucker then the stock Ibanez, and let her keep my neighbours up all night.
I sleep like a baby by the way...

So I was just wondering how a humbucker would sound neutral....with no tone pot to shape it. As far as what type of wood the guitar is...im not too sure.

[UnklMickey]

almost all (passive) tone controls in guitars are treble-cut.

at '0' they cut treble, at '10' they do (almost) nothing.



so no tone control, will sound the same as tone control on '10'.

maybe just a tiny bit brighter.


unk

[Ripper]

Thanks Unk... Im going to tackle this project when im on holiday next month. Stay by the phone will ya?

[ux4484]

On my squier strat, the switch 1 position is bridge humbucker with no tone control.
With clean amplification it is pretty bright but with a good low end..
For chords it approaches Tom Petty's RIC on "Refugee". Right out of the box when I got it home I plugged it into my bass practice amp, at the first chord played in that position, it hit me how much it sounded like a RIC.
For leads, it's kind of close to Mike Campbell's strat on the same song.
After I blocked the trem, it got bassier and lost a bit of the RIC tone with chords.

With my Digitech, It's pretty much the only PUP I use.

[ltb]

Also, you can switch out the volume controls so you totally unload the pickup making it open up sound wise.
Everything connected to the circuit (volume and tone pots and cap) affect the sounded to some degree. I like to make my tone pots totally out of the circuit when at full clockwise by opening the pot up, cutting the carbon trace at full clockwise position so the wiper does not contact the carbon trace then reassembling it. Really pretty easy to do or you can just buy the pot already made that way.

[ablair]

I have a 2003 Fender American Deluxe Fat Strat and the bridge (HB) tone pot has a "notch" just past 10 that completely takes the pot & cap out of the circuit. That was the stock setup of the time for the AM DLX FAT Strats. That is where I run it most of the time.