Custom HSS Strat component value advice needed

[madman]

Hello, good people!

I am 90% done on a slightly modified HSS scheme but need to find out/confirm some component values, if you would be so kind.
Here's the deal:

HSS
Master Volume
Master Tone
Blender Pot

The neck and bridge are blended at the pot - no problems there.
The neck and middle are also grounded via two respective 500K resistors so they would "see" the 500K volume pot as a 250K.
I included that "kinda '50s vintage mod" where the signal is sent from Volume to the Tone section from the OUT of the volume pot, not from the input to the Volume.
Not a big fan of the treble bleed circuit - this is supposed to help lose less treble while turning the volume down and help clean the guitar better, like the old Fenders and Gibsons.

Here's the scheme, I did use Lindy Fralin's schematic and simply modified the blue/cyan wire for the vintage mod, so I don't take any credit for this.




My questions are:

• what should be the values of the Tone and Blender pot?
  I guess it's 500K for both, cause the resistors on the single coils make sure that's not a problem for them, a humbucker I plan on using also needs a 500K Tone pot and I presume using a 500K Blender pot would be better as it would make sure the signal is better.. hm.. sent to/blocked to ground without bleeding through to the output?

• what should the Tone cap value be?
  Since it's a master tone, it will be used by both single coils and a humbucker, how to reconcile the two? I'll be using a PAF, 7.9K, Alnico IV and the singles are 6K, Alnico V, so the PAF is not a heavy, dark pickup. If the pots are all 500K, I guess a .022 cap would be used, but if the singles "see" 250K, will the .022 be too thin? :/

Any and all input is welcome, I just need to finish this schematic in order to buy the parts so thanks for helping out!
Igor

[JohnH]

I like HSS strats too. I use a 0.022uF cap on my master tone. Also, the cap value makes no difference at all at full tone, so you should pick one to suit your preference for the muted tones. There's not really a correct value, but I liked 0.022 best.

I've also tried that form of blender. As you turn it, most of the audible change happens in the first few k of the pot resistance, suggesting a low value pot. But to reveal the full sparkle of a simple single coil, it needs a very high value or ideally put out of circuit.

The ideal IMO, is a 250k log no-load pot, which goes to open-circuit =infinite, at 10. You can buy these , with a detent notch, or easily convert any full size normal pot.

[madman]

Thanks, John!

I'll go with the .022 then, you're right.
Hm, now that you mention it, I don't have a problem with blending happening anywhere in the pot's range, the single reason I want to use it at all is to add that neck single throatiness to the PAF, it might as well be a switch for me.

What concerns me are the 500K resistors, cause if I use a 250K blender pot and have 500K resistors on the singles in order not to have a problem with 500K volume/tone pots - the resistance the singles would "see" with a 250K pot would be 1/250+1/500 blah blah = 166K. That would let a LOT of high end escape to ground and would essentially muffle them down?

Ah, wouldn't be fun without this torture

[JohnH]

But if you use a no-load pot, then it has no effect at all when its at max so no further losses.

[guitarnerdswe]

If you use a super switch, you can have switchable tone cap values for the different positions.

[madman]

Damn, now you got me thinking.
BTW, read you post on tone caps, good stuff!

[madman]

Nerdswe, to be honest, I'm trying to quit
Had a HSS with neck-bridge, coil-splits, switches, caps, blah..
Trying to have a simple HSS without a billion options but with a master tone and the ability to add some neck to the PAF.
That's as far as I'll go now

[guitarnerdswe]

Well, the switching caps happen automatically with a superswich. No extra controls on the outside. So it's the same as before in terms of controls, but you get the traditional tone cap values for each pickup combination on the 5-way. 

But I totally agree with you. I try to keep the number of extra controls and options to a minimum, and for all of them to be useful. 

[Yogi B]

Jan 22, 2021 4:06:09 GMT -5 madman said:

What concerns me are the 500K resistors, cause if I use a 250K blender pot and have 500K resistors on the singles in order not to have a problem with 500K volume/tone pots - the resistance the singles would "see" with a 250K pot would be 1/250+1/500 blah blah = 166K. That would let a LOT of high end escape to ground and would essentially muffle them down?

Kind of, though it wouldn't be the 250k of the pot loading the pickups but 250k in series with the other blended out pickup (bridge or neck depending on the position), so the effect would be lessened slightly. Additionally there'd still be a small amount of mostly treble frequencies that would bleed through from the blended out pickup, that would also offset this. However, as JohnH mentioned, a no load pot would solve that issue and would prevent the bleed through at fully blended out.

I've been thinking about this circuit for the past week, and you're right the 500k resistors do bother me: by placing them directly in parallel with the single coils that means they're 'before' the volume control, meaning that when they're in play they'll mostly undo the only advantage of the so-called '50s wiring mod that places the tone control 'after' the volume.

Additionally using the blender pot in the bridge position you'll not only be blending in the neck pickup, adding the 500k resistor to load both neck & bridge pickups.

You do have an unused half of the selector switch so you could wire that up to add the resistors to the M, N & M, and N positions and have them switched in so that they're placed in a way more compatible with '50s wiring i.e. in parallel with the tone control. This would also allow you to avoid doubling up both resistors in the middle & neck position. However, note that placing components between either of the outer lugs of a volume pot and it's wiper (rather than between the outer lugs) will have an effect on the pot's apparent taper. In the case of placing the resistors 'after' the volume pot, this will cause the 'gap' between 10 and 9 to be larger. The effect is worsened the smaller the lower the resistance is, hence why you might wish to avoid the doubling up in the N & M position.

I have to admit that personally I don't really get the idea of trying to balance humbuckers & single coils using resistors -- I'd prefer to embrace there differences than trying to compensate for them. Furthermore, the commonly repeated advice to use fixed resistors to effectively turn a 500k pot into a 250k pot is based on the idea that 500k pots are brighter that 250k pots, which itself is only a half truth. A (logarithmic) 500k volume pot is brighter when at 10 and in the lower range of the pot from roughly 5 down to 0 -- however a 250k pot is actually a little brighter for the remainder of upper half  of the sweep, roughly  9.7 to 5.

---

Going back to your mention of '50s wiring in your OP:

Jan 21, 2021 15:37:14 GMT -5 madman said:

I included that "kinda '50s vintage mod" where the signal is sent from Volume to the Tone section from the OUT of the volume pot, not from the input to the Volume.
Not a big fan of the treble bleed circuit - this is supposed to help lose less treble while turning the volume down and help clean the guitar better, like the old Fenders and Gibsons.

While Gibson certainly did use '50s wiring, I'm not aware of Fender ever doing so, though admittedly that could just be a blindspot in my own knowledge.

It also sounds like this might be you're first time trying out '50s wiring. If so, I should probably make you aware that it isn't 'free', the price you pay with '50s wiring is that the volume and tone controls become interactive.

At full volume, the tone controls of both wiring styles behave identically -- however with '50s wiring the cutoff frequency of the tone control is dependent on the output impedance of the volume control, thus rolling back the volume control (even by the smallest amount) causes the tone control to cut a much larger range of frequencies -- acting much more like a secondary volume control. Rolling the volume down further (to around 3 & below on a 10% log pot) tends to cause the tone control to behave a little more normally, but will have limited range (a fully rolled off '50s wired tone pot with the volume at 2 will be roughly equivalent to a modern wired tone control turned down to only 4).

Not a big fan of the treble bleed circuit

Maybe I'm reading too much into your use of a definite article, but there isn't just a single treble bleed circuit. I don't know which you've tried, however with your mention of following a Lindy Fralin diagram I can't help but wonder if that's what you tried. It'd be unfortunate to colour your perception of all treble bleed variations based on a particular example, which itself is a bit of an outlier. As far as I know Fralin's recommendation is that of a 220k resistor (which is fine enough) combined in parallel with a 2.2nF (or 2.5nF) capacitor, which I'm pretty sure is the largest capacitance value that I've ever seen suggested for a treble bleed.

That being said, when compared to '50s wiring, most treble bleed variations still go too far. The closest a simple treble bleed circuit can get to '50s wiring is probably via using a small value capacitor (alone, no resistor), somewhere in the range of 47-120pF.

Another possible option is to use modern wiring with a no-load tone pot, and compensating for the fact that with the tone on 10 you now only have one 500k pot rather than two. Those options are: using a 250k pot for the volume; permanently wiring a 500k resistor 'after' the volume control; or, if DIYing a no-load pot by cutting the pot's resistive element, it can be wired that such a 500k resistor is only applied when needed (i.e. when the tone pot is on 10). Each of which are roughly equivalent of '50s style wring when the tone pot is at 10, and modern wiring otherwise.