Treble-bleed circuit

[TinPan]

Two questions here: first I have quite a few people asking me to install treble-bleed circuits, I had been stocking them from stewmac at aprox $9 ea +S&H, and had a few guitarist's boohoo it with my service fee plus the cost of the part, so I decided to make my own buying resistors & caps in bulk, my question is I noticed several different value cap's & resistor's being used for these circuits. Are there different values being used for different guitars? or different intended effect? So far I have stocked up on 100K 1/4w resistors and 0.002uf caps, should I be stocking other values? And for what purpose?

Second question: I have an old digital multi-meter on it's way out, this meter was mainly used when I was in the TV repair industry and it does not test the above mentioned cap's at those values, can anyone recommend a digital meter for measuring these value cap's we are using for guitar electronics? It doesn't have to be an expensive meter.
Thanks!

 

[atemporal]

Re: Treble-bleed circuit

I think that cap is too big for a treble bleed. It's more the default tone cap. For treble bleed they're usually 1000-1200pF when combined with a 100k-330k resistor either in series or parallel. From reading various sources the "standard" options seem to be:

try 20k in series with (150k parallel with 1200pF)
130k in series or parallel with 1000pF
anything between 220pF to 1500pF by itself (note it can suck your bass and make it too trebley)

 

[Clint 55]

Re: Treble-bleed circuit

Less fiddling with a cap only and it works well. 150 - 400pf.

 

[atemporal]

Re: Treble-bleed circuit

some great advice here: https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/28387-mod-garage-deep-diving-into-treble-bleed-networks

then there's Fender's qualitative overview, but it has the useful diagram showing the values they use on US teles: https://www.fender.com/articles/tech-talk/how-a-treble-bleed-circuit-can-affect-your-tone

 

[TinPan]

Re: Treble-bleed circuit

I was going by this

 

[Artie]

Re: Treble-bleed circuit

I think that if I was going to do many of these installs, especially for customers, I'd construct a little R/C box with a pair of 10 or 12 position rotary switches and a pair of long clip-on leads. Use a selection resistors and caps that are "in the ballpark", so to speak, and you could quickly and easily test each individual installation for the best values. Of course, also keep a small stock of each of the R/C values on your switches.

 

[blueman335]

Re: Treble-bleed circuit

some great advice here: https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/28387-mod-garage-deep-diving-into-treble-bleed-networks

then there's Fender's qualitative overview, but it has the useful diagram showing the values they use on US teles: https://www.fender.com/articles/tech-talk/how-a-treble-bleed-circuit-can-affect-your-tone

Good article. I'm a big fan of the Kinman treble bleed(resistor & cap in series). It eliminates the problems of messing up the pot's taper and getting too bright when the volume's turned down. Buy 100 of each and you can do a guitar for pennies. For me, I don't see the point in doing anything else for treble bleed.

For neck HB's I use spin-a-split, which makes a push-pull for coil split look pitiful in comparison. With spin-a-split you get as much, or as little, of the 2nd coil as you want. Dialing it down adds treble and reduces mids and volume, until you get all the way down to one coil. Costs nothing as you just turn the neck tone pot into a 2nd volume control, but for one coil only. Then with the Kinman mod I maintain treble on the bridge pickup at reduced volumes. These mods add a lot of versatility in tones for almost no cost.

 

[atemporal]

Re: Treble-bleed circuit

I was going by this View attachment 97851

Sorry I'd read your post as 0.02uF (the standard tone cap these days is 0.022uF)

Assuming that the SD diagram means 0.002uF (and not 0.002F) that's 2000pF so a bit higher but in the right region. It depends on which pickups, their resistances and inductance, what pots etc. You'll need to try out different combinations and see what works.

 

[Teleplayer]

Re: Treble-bleed circuit

I used various values for caps. I agree with the people who suggest smaller caps around 150pF to 330pF ( 0.00015u to 0.00033u). Mine are really subtle, and its mostly used to compensate for the treble loss due to cable capacitance. My default treble bleed is 220pF in SERIES with 180k resistor. If you a want more noticeable effect when you roll off the volume, you can try 270pF in SERIES with 180k resistor. I found the same values work with 250k or 500k volume pots, so there is no need to make any adjustment for that.