ErikH
Well-known member
Sounds more like a veritone setup, which is completely different than putting a resistor across the two outer lugs of a volume pot or any pot.
Best tone cap for a telecaster that is too bright?
- Thread starter Mikelamury
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Sounds more like a veritone setup, which is completely different than putting a resistor across the two outer lugs of a volume pot or any pot.
freefrog
Well-known member
Hello,
Tons of good advices from our fellow members above. Now, there's alternative solutions.
Let me quote once again the old Duncan FAQ's (those available two decades ago):
And let's reword it like this:
1-if a guitar with passive pickups is too bright, a long cable can help to tame its sound.
The reason is explained there: http://zerocapcable.com/wordpress/?page_id=209
The effect can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2sjeVQpS94
2-For someone who wouldn't want of a cumbersome cable, the related capacitance can be emulated with a simple capacitor from hot to ground. This cap can be soldered in one male plug of a regular guitar cable or on the female output jack plug of the guitar.
The capacitance needed depends on the lenght of cable to emulate. Count 100pF to 150pF per meter of "virtual cable" to add. A 1nF cap mimics 6m / 20ft of added cable, for example (1nF = 0.001µF. It's 22 or 47 times less than our regular 0.022µ or 0.047µ tone caps).
Try between 220pF and 1200pF (= 0.22nF and 1.2nF = 0.00022µ or 0.001µ. Yes, it's low). Above that, an added cap will start to act as a mid enhancer, with a cocked wah effect.
NOTE - I've a 1nF cap on a TBX tone pot in my main Strat. I use it when I plug this Strat in a cranked Marshall. It avoids me to use a coily cord as Hendrix or SRV did. Coily cord are capacitive but also cumbersome and heavy: their weight pulls on the female plugs of guitars and unscrews them. Hence the interest of a cap instead of a long cable. Furthermore, capacitors are cheaper.
FWIW: my humble two cents - not far from the price of a cheapo capacitor.
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freefrog
Well-known member
BTW, a .05µF wouldn't work as a treble bleed. Even a 0.005µF wouldn't. A treble bleed would require something like 0.5 NANOfarad (=0.0005µF): 560pF or 470pF precisely. It would make sense with a 250k volume.
Now and while I keep rambling about it: if the tiny cap on the S1 switch is involved in some kind of high pass / low cut filter, things become different and it might explain the feeling of excessive brightness... What is exactly the guitar evoked and is there a schematic about its wiring?
EDIT - If the Telecaster is an American "Elite" , here is something that I've experienced a while back with this model (and it was making it sound "too bright", to some extent): https://www.mylespaul.com/threads/20.../#post-8114177
The PU's on this guitar made me think that Fender had finally found how to obtain authentic single coilish sounds from noiseless transducers... But they were surely transparent and bright by design and might benefit of the "capacitive" trick evoked in my previous answer above.
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DavidRavenMoon
New member
The tone cap is basically out of the circuit when the control is on 10. There’s only a little resistive loading. So changing the cap won’t help.
You need darker sounding pickups.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Mikelamury
New member
The guitar in question is a fender vintera modified 60's telecaster. And when I called fender they didn't say anything about the volume cap being a treble bleed but they did say it was a .05uf cap.
freefrog
Well-known member
Ok. So it's this one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfB0EC9ksys&t=195s
Does yours sound brighter than the guitar in this vid?
Mikelamury
New member
It's hard to say because his amp settings are obviously far from what I use but with my distortion on it sounds a lil too bright there are other things I don't like about them also do I'm thinking about getting new pickups. Any suggestions? I don't want the bridge to be too bright but I definitely don't ever want the low end to mud up on me . I play punk and ska/punk, been looking at the Quarter pound tele bridge, what do you guys think?
Clint 55
OH THE DOUBLE THICK GLAZE!
Shoot us a pic of your wiring. Caps block lows, so if it's in series with your signal, it will kill your low end and make it thin.
beaubrummels
Well-known member
BTW, a .05µF wouldn't work as a treble bleed. Even a 0.005µF wouldn't. A treble bleed would require something like 0.5 NANOfarad (=0.0005µF): 560pF or 470pF precisely. It would make sense with a 250k volume.
Now and while I keep rambling about it: if the tiny cap on the S1 switch is involved in some kind of high pass / low cut filter, things become different and it might explain the feeling of excessive brightness... What is exactly the guitar evoked and is there a schematic about its wiring?
EDIT - If the Telecaster is an American "Elite" , here is something that I've experienced a while back with this model (and it was making it sound "too bright", to some extent): https://www.mylespaul.com/threads/20.../#post-8114177
The PU's on this guitar made me think that Fender had finally found how to obtain authentic single coilish sounds from noiseless transducers... But they were surely transparent and bright by design and might benefit of the "capacitive" trick evoked in my previous answer above.
FWIW - The Vintera specs say they are Vintage 60's Hot pickups; supposedly hotter but still retain brightness and twang, partly be being coupled with the vintage brass bar bridge. Doesn't mention noiseless. 4-way blade is Bridge / Bridge+Neck Parallel / Neck / Bridge+Neck Series. The S-1 puts the pickups out of phase with each other.
freefrog
Well-known member
Yep, I've seen it in the vid after the answer that you quote.
I should nave started by asking what was the guitar involved. :9: Now, my reference to the Elite was moslty a reminder about the risk of a guitar miswired in the factory (situation that I've experienced twice in the past years with a Squier Tele and an American Elite Tele, as detailed in my MLP link).
freefrog
Well-known member
Thx for the info.
Regarding the 0.004µF : in a private discussion that I had a while back, the staff of a "well known Australian pickups maker" was also refering to such very low value caps... and Bill Lawrence had evoked the same kind of trick in a page about cables still available online: http://www.billlawrence.com/Pages/All_About_Tone.htm/CableandSound.htm
So, with Seymour in his old FAQ, we have at least 3 "big names" + a boutique winder mentioning low value caps as a useful tone shaper... and the list is not limitative (only my old memory is). Reason why I often mention this idea (although it often ends ignored: I guess that talking about capacitance sounds dissuasively "geeky tech" for many readers (?)... )
Now, 0.004µF is pretty high: it's the capacitance that I've measured on the longest cable that I've here right now (25m of straight wire). I humbly admit to prefer lower values, even lower than the 2.4nF mentioned by Bill Lawrence: once enabled, for example, the simple 1nF mounted in my main Strat makes its stock bridge PU remarkably close tonally to a BKP "Brute Force" that I've in another Strat (the "Brute Force" being more or less the hand wound equivalent of a Duncan SSL6). it avoids me to swap pickups each time I need a beefier Strat tone.
A higher capacitance can certainly sound good but above 1,2nF it becomes really noticeable and progressively rises towards a "cocked wah" effect. But why not? After all, Peter Willis used this trick to define his signature guitar tone in the first Def Lep albums.
End of my useless rambling of this Sunday morning - And long life to low value caps !
hamerfan
Well-known member
I think MFs reasoning was that most players back then had long coily leads (Clapton) and some pedals in front (Hendrix), others liked on top of that a tape echo (Gilmour) or even a reel tape machine (Blackmore). That adds up. MF did not connect the cap directly for full on, the pot makes it possible to blend in a certain amount. So he says he preferred a 4nF with the pot.
But all in all its a matter of taste.
But all in all its a matter of taste.
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