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Volume pot bleeding treble, even with treble bleed mod

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  • Volume pot bleeding treble, even with treble bleed mod

    This is a bit of a mess...

    In my custom H-S-S Charvel, I have the '59/Custom Hybrid in the bridge, with a Triple Shot pickup ring, SD stacked strat pickups (I forget which ones exactly, but they're measuring around 12.4/12.5 DCR), I believe a 500k tone pot, I forget what value capacitor, a 1M volume pot with a push-push switch to wire the middle and neck pickup in series, and a blower switch.

    I did have a treble bleed on the volume pot, which worked very nicely for a while. I rewire this guitar pretty often to try new things, so it's hard to place when exactly this started, but the treble bleed was in, and I noticed a huge drop in treble if the volume goes below 9. Around 5, it almost sounds as though the tone pot has been rolled down some. This was happening even with the treble bleed installed. I thought maybe I had done something wrong with that, so I took it out, and it didn't seem to make any difference.

    I'm pretty confident the volume pot is an audio taper, but I don't know what ratio, and I can't find the exact model that it is. I think it came from Allparts. The taper sounds relatively even as far as volume of frequencies below 1.2kHz-ish, but there's no exact science done there.

    I most likely wired something up wrong, and should just take everything out and rewire it from scratch, but I wanted to see if any potential issue jumps out at you guys. What could cause such a drastic drop in treble with a slight turn of the volume pot?

    Thanks!

  • #2
    Re: Volume pot bleeding treble, even with treble bleed mod

    Usually when talking about suspect wiring, the best starting point is a set of good pictures of the actual wiring.

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    • #3
      Re: Volume pot bleeding treble, even with treble bleed mod

      Originally posted by nexion218 View Post
      Usually when talking about suspect wiring, the best starting point is a set of good pictures of the actual wiring.
      I would, but it's pretty cramped in there, as I'm sure you can imagine. I'd have to take some of it apart to get a good picture of the connections that are likely to be the issue. For instance, you can't see the connections to the volume pot lugs, because the switch and its wiring are in the way. If I start moving things around, I'll probably snap something off and have to break out the soldering iron and patch it up. I'm just hoping someone knows what connection one could make that would cause an instant drop in treble with a turn of the volume pot It's much more severe than just needing a treble bleed.

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      • #4
        Re: Volume pot bleeding treble, even with treble bleed mod

        yes, a few clear detailed pics would be a start. chances are something came loose

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        • #5
          Re: Volume pot bleeding treble, even with treble bleed mod

          I did some reading because it's always good to learn and if I'm wrong the guys will correct me... I'd check the wiring of the cap in treble bleed. As Iunderstand it, in order to function as a high pass filter it should be placed between the wiper and the hot lug. But - provided I still understand these things correctly - if you accidentally wired the cap between on of the lugs and the ground, you've created a low pass filter, which kinda explains the high end rolloff on your volume. BUt as usual, I might be completely off the mark...

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          • #6
            Re: Volume pot bleeding treble, even with treble bleed mod

            Yeah it sounds like one of the legs of the bleed cap is grounding out.
            Just check the legs of the cap
            I always use very thin shrink tube on the legs to ensure they don't ground or short
            www.crossleyguitars.com

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            • #7
              Re: Volume pot bleeding treble, even with treble bleed mod

              That was my initial thought, so I removed the treble bleed mod entirely. The problem is still there though. I suspect it's something between how the volume and tone are wired together. I remember the original wiring differing from a lot of diagrams I've seen, and I've only swapped one thing at a time, leaving connections where they were. I should probably re-wire the volume/tone pots from a diagram.

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              • #8
                Re: Volume pot bleeding treble, even with treble bleed mod

                I could see a 1 meg audio taper volume pot behave like that normally. The fact that the treble bleed had no effect in or out makes me wonder. Is your tone wired like a 50's gibson? Sight unseen, I'm just guessing. Even a wiring diagram of what you did would help understand what ccould be wrong.

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                • #9
                  Re: Volume pot bleeding treble, even with treble bleed mod

                  Godzilla generates lots of volume and will make you bleed!!!!

                  Originally posted by Bad City
                  He's got the crowd on his side and the blue jean lights in his eyes...

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: Volume pot bleeding treble, even with treble bleed mod

                    Originally posted by beaubrummels View Post
                    I could see a 1 meg audio taper volume pot behave like that normally. The fact that the treble bleed had no effect in or out makes me wonder. Is your tone wired like a 50's gibson? Sight unseen, I'm just guessing. Even a wiring diagram of what you did would help understand what ccould be wrong.
                    I dug into it a little bit. The tone circuit is wired like the tone circuit in this diagram:

                    In this article, we cover how to wire two sets of volume and tone controls along with a toggle switch to control which pickup is connected to the jack.


                    I've seen some other diagrams, including 50s wiring, where the cap is between the pots instead of going to ground. Is that more normal? In all my guitars, the stock wiring has it going from one lug of the tone pot to ground. I was going to experiment with this, but I took out the tone circuit entirely, and the problem persisted.

                    I think you're right, and it's just that the 1 meg pot is too much. I have some 500k push-push pots coming, so I'll try swapping for one of them, and maybe putting the treble bleed back in.

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                    • #11
                      Re: Volume pot bleeding treble, even with treble bleed mod

                      If the tone is wire to the outer lug, and thats where the pickup is wired to, then its modern wiring......where a treble bleed will really work to retain highs as you roll back.
                      If somehow the pickup is wired to the middle lug and the outer lug is to the switch, then this is another wiring type altogether, but in that case the tone would be on the output and less reactive to the volume rolldown.

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                      • #12
                        Re: Volume pot bleeding treble, even with treble bleed mod

                        Update:

                        I swapped out the 1 meg pot for a 500k, put in a no-load tone-pot, and put the treble bleed mod back in. I'm in love with my guitar again.

                        The no-load pot made a bigger difference on the brightness of the guitar than I ever expected.

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