Thoughts on this tone pot

[frets]

Hi Guys,

Im thinking about making another type of concentric tone pot.  Maybe a concentric Bass cut/treble cut with a little different setup.  I ran across this tone concept from Joe Gore, the Tonefiend guy.  I just wanted some thoughts on it before I spend my time building it.  It looks like a variation on the Greasebucket but not quite.  

Do you think I could use the concept on both pots of a concentric that would produce a sort of nice roll in bass cut and treble cut?

[ashcatlt]

I mean the small cap is just across the output (or I guess pickup? depends how the V pot is wired) always and could be placed in several other places to accomplish exactly the same thing. Then this is just any old T control. I’m not super clear on how you intend to implement this as bass cut, so it’s tough to say how that might work out.

[frets]

Ash,
I really don’t know yet. It looks like if I place the small cap where it is, it will bleed into the other pot whatever is on it?  Or will it?  I have to sit down and diagram it out.  My goal would be to get a more gradual cut on each pot by using the “small cap.”  I’ll have both outputs coming off of each pot so I now don’t foresee any bleeding over.  I want to treat both pots independently and achieve that more gradual cut.  More of a range of cuts
.  But that’s just me thinking.  I have to draw it out.  I don’t want a situation where one pot is just additive to the other darkening the tone.

[thetragichero]

this appears electronically identical (if not schematically, but electrons don't care how you draw `em) to the small cap that was in parallel with the pickup on my 65 guild freshman. i could NEVER get enough treble out of it but once i removed the cap (and embiggened one of the pots for extra measure) there is now plenty of treble

to cut bass (in the simplest RC filter sense) you need a series cap with a resistor to ground. maybe i have explained poorly but this should help visualize it: www.muzique.com/schem/filter.htm

[ashcatlt]

Yeah like I said the small cap literally just kills treble any time that thing is connect. It’s not helping anything be “more gradual”. It’s just making it darker overall.

[frets]

Alpha makes two dual gang pots that fit a Tele cavity.  Here they are:


The second pot to the right is marketed by a lot of other companies, but it is an Alpha because I buy these from an Alpha Distributor.  I have often used the concentric to do a volume and tone, including tone caps on both sides, Greasebuckets, Rothstein’s, tying the tone pot to a 4PDT mini Varitone (I’ve shown that one on the forum).  I use them a lot on bass harnesses with the Volume and the tone carrying two caps on lugs 1 and 3 (usually .047 and .068).

I would like to be able to put together a high pass/low pass configuration that would work like a PTB but have increased connectivity methods and a more gradual roll in of tone.  That’s where using Gore’s tone pot came up in my mind.  But I see no way to make a more versatile bass and treble pot beyond the G&L PTB that Retread, Sumgai and SSStonelover helped me convert to a concentric pot.

[ms]

As ashcatit said the small cap is just across the pickup when the tone control is connected, and therefore its function is to lower the resonance frequency a bit.  Why would you want to do that?  If it was too high, you would expect the pickup maker to wind on more turns, lowering it and increasing the output.  I think the real question is why anyone uses the big cap.  It has no function until the pot gets most of the way to zero and then it produces a very low resonance frequency.  This makes the guitar sound sort of like a bass, and maybe in the very early days it replaced the instrument that Leo had not yet invented.

The big cap can be replaced with a resistor (10K, 20K, whatever).   From 10 on down the circuit first behaves in the normal way, reducing the Q of the resonance, but then it transitions to an almost a pure LR filter.  IMO, useful for setting overdrive tone.

[Deleted]

To me it reminds me of some forms of G&L circuits ive seen

with a 1nF going to ground before the Tone Circuit
Cable to Pot, Lug 3, Lug 2 and the "Small Capacitor" are all ont the same line