Brightening a dark sounding humbucker with equalizer

[donaldr]

I always use an EQ before my amp!
Usually I cut the bass a lot, and boost the mids a bit depending on the guitar. Cutting the bass before the amp is tightening the bass response, so I can add more using the amp eq without sounding muddy.

 

[Hank-]

Most eq control on vast majority of amps are passive cut controls.

An eq pedal will boost as well as cut the frequencies you want and you get more options to shape the sound at different frequencies.

A 10band graphic eq will be enough. A parametric eq will be more precise with added Q control.

Besides a eq pedal, you could set your amp up in such a way that with your controls set half way rotation, theres room to go brighter by turning up the guitar's tone knob. Normally people like to dial in their amp with the guitar controls wide open so theres no more room left on the guitar controls to add more volume/gain or highs using the guitar knobs.

 

[freefrog]

My unrequested 2 cents will consist to recall that when guitar heroes use a graphic equalizer as a pre EQ under high gain, it's rather to boost the mids, which makes standard humbuckers sound like hotter ones. Boosting high frequencies with active electronics should logically tend to add hiss...

Now, lowering the bass and scooping the low mids should work: that's what Lukather did in the early 80's, if memory serves me.

That said, for me, nothing is worth clarity from the start... Any passive hot pickup should get brighter with things like a 1M volume, a no-load tone pot and/or a low capacitance cable (20 years ago, I had shared on a guitar forum an article named "the natural equalizer", because that's what a cable is with passive pickups: try 10' of Sommer LLX, it should illustrate what I mean with its +/- 180pF vs the 360 to 450pF of a standard 10' cable... And avoid cheap "Yellow Cables": they measure almost 100pF per foot, vs 16pF for the Sommer aforementioned).

A few notes on the relative downsides of passive brightening solutions:
-1M pots make the sound brighter as long as they remain full up. When lowered, they have the opposite effect and might require treble bleed circuits.
-A no-load tone pot might produce a popping noise when the wipper touches its resistive track. A 10M resistor from hot to ground should avoid that.
-Series capacitors are a well known way to tighten and brighten the sound: they are the first components in treble boosters... but when installed in guitars, they don't work well with some drive effects (like fuzz pedals). That said, EVH had a series capacitor in a guitar without even knowing it: he had harmed one coil of his humbucker by working on it and the broken wire reacted like a series cap tightening the tone...

Non limitative list, FWIW.

 

[ehdwuld]

Wonder if just putting a treble bleed on the humbucker at the switch would work. Where it's always in circuit

 

[freefrog]

Wonder if just putting a treble bleed on the humbucker at the switch would work. Where it's always in circuit

It would become a series capacitor with its relative downsides : unusual behavior with some drive effects AND alteration of the sound when the switch is on B+N or B+M, if the guitar has several pickups. A resistor in parallel with the cap would tame these unrequested effects without totally cancelling them...

 

[Cynical]

That said, for me, nothing is worth clarity from the start... Any passive hot pickup should get brighter with things like a 1M volume, a no-load tone pot and/or a low capacitance cable (20 years ago, I had shared on a guitar forum an article named "the natural equalizer", because that's what a cable is with passive pickups: try 10' of Sommer LLX, it should illustrate what I mean with its +/- 180pF vs the 360 to 450pF of a standard 10' cable... And avoid cheap "Yellow Cables": they measure almost 100pF per foot, vs 16pF for the Sommer aforementioned).

On the flip-side, my favorite tone is going straight into my Bogner with a fairly long but otherwise "normal" cable, no buffers, precisely because it takes out a bit of harshness in the distortion.

 

[GuitarStv]

On the flip-side, my favorite tone is going straight into my Bogner with a fairly long but otherwise "normal" cable, no buffers, precisely because it takes out a bit of harshness in the distortion.

It's easy to get that tone in other ways though - you just need to add capacitance. You can actually measure the cable, wire up a small value capacitor, and then get exactly the same sound with a short cable and a buffer. But you can't do the opposite . . . you can't get the non-capacitance loaded sound out of a long cable run.

 

[jeremy]

finding what you like and what works for you is the key. i use good cables, but i do like a bit of capacitance when using low wind/low output pups

 

[Cynical]

It's easy to get that tone in other ways though - you just need to add capacitance. You can actually measure the cable, wire up a small value capacitor, and then get exactly the same sound with a short cable and a buffer. But you can't do the opposite . . . you can't get the non-capacitance loaded sound out of a long cable run.

Sure, but all of that sounds like a lot of effort, and I already have the long cable.

 

[freefrog]

On the flip-side, my favorite tone is going straight into my Bogner with a fairly long but otherwise "normal" cable, no buffers, precisely because it takes out a bit of harshness in the distortion.

Totally understandable... I use high capacitive loads for the same thing, with Strat pickups for instance.

The post that you quote was my attempt to help in this specific case of hot dark pickup...


As a side note: clear sounding humbuckers stay clear even when a higher cable capacitance drags down their resonant peak. A 1M pot makes this peak higher and this height doesn't disappear when the capacitive load is increased, for example. And pickups with low capacitance coils still give a more extended high range when their volume controls are lowered...

 

[ehdwuld]

I had thought my amps and guitars were dark

Then I switched to wireless without the 20 ft cable and noticed my amps and guitars were much brighter than before

I had noticed that the 20 ft George Ls cables were much brighter than the same length braided store brand

 

[freefrog]

Yep, wireless without cable emulation logically gives the brighest possible tone to a passive pickup.

But it doesn't cooperate well with old school treble boosters or fuzz pedals.

An intermediate solution is to put a switchable preamp just at the output of the guitar, like the old Stratoblaster (easy to assemble in a few minutes since it's based on a single transistor). I've built one just in order to have that Hughie Thomasson Strat tone and it gave me much fun...

 

[jeremy]

ive thought about building a stratoblaster recently, seems pretty simple

 

[freefrog]

ive thought about building a stratoblaster recently, seems pretty simple

Yes it is, and it's a rewarding circuit IMHO.

 

[Aceman]

I always mention this about an EQ. It can't add something that isn't there in the first place. Like Jeremy said, lower the bass first.

- If the highs are too fat/round/dull, they will become very loud fat/round/dull highs
- If the highs are there but thin, they will be loud thin highs
- And if low enough, quiet enough, a lot of noise will be added also

Crappy highs + EQ can just be more louder crappy highs plus noise.

But give it a try.

 

[Mincer]

ive thought about building a stratoblaster recently, seems pretty simple

GGG makes a cheapish kit.

 

[jeremy]

yeah, $28 isnt bad at all. though i bet i have most of the components already if i wanted to dig through my unorganized shoeboxes of parts