Darkening my Strat

donaldr

donaldr

Well-known member
Hi. I have a Fender Strat that I really like but in some amps she's brighter than I like. I have Rose pickups and like them also (clarity, responsiveness, etc). The wiring is Obsidian with treble bleed and I think this is the culprit: it's not darkening the sound when I lower the volume, but I don't want to mess with it as it's also a plus on some occasions. At the end I manage to get a sound I really dig having the neck tone pot around 4-5 and the middle/bridge tone pot around 2-3. Nothing wrong with that, I know.

As I don't want to mod my Strat, I was wondering if I can put a resistor or a capacitor into one of my guitar cable to simulate the tone pots at half-way and then get a wider use of the full "resolution". Right now it's 250k volume and tone pots.

So the question is: Should I put a resistor into the cable or a capacitor?
 
I agree with you, but I will try to remove some highs with a $1 capacitor or a $0.05 resistor first ;)
 
If you solder a 125K resistor in series with a .022uF capacitor between hot and ground of your cable it will be like a 250K/.022uF tone control is halfway off. The other option is to use a much smaller cap (maybe like .005uF? I’ll let others chime in) and no resistor to emulate a longer cable.

Personally I’d start messing with the treble bleed values, pot values and cap values in the Strat to get it where you want. I wouldn’t want to be dependent on one specific cable to get a tone I like.
 
Another option is to replace the tone cap(s) with .1uf like the Eric Johnson Strat has and original 50's Strats actually had. Yeah, it can get dark when rolling down the tone a lot but when it's wide open, it won't be overly bright either. Worth a shot. A treble bleed with single-coils seems weird to me.
 
ErikH said:
Another option is to replace the tone cap(s) with .1uf like the Eric Johnson Strat has and original 50's Strats actually had. Yeah, it can get dark when rolling down the tone a lot but when it's wide open, it won't be overly bright either. Worth a shot. A treble bleed with single-coils seems weird to me.
Click to expand...

I’ve got a treble bleed on my Tele, it’s fantastic. Only the
cap version too.

Ive also got a Strat with the .1uF, definitely an option, but it gets
dark quickly.

If OP is always at 50% or below, he can swap the tone control with a 125K pot as well.
 
PFDarkside said:
I’ve got a treble bleed on my Tele, it’s fantastic. Only the
cap version too.

Ive also got a Strat with the .1uF, definitely an option, but it gets
dark quickly.

If OP is always at 50% or below, he can swap the tone control with a 125K pot as well.
Click to expand...

Good option on the tone control pot value. In fact, a 125K resistor across the outer lugs of the pot will get it close enough.
 
GuitarStv said:
If you can get a sound you like with the tone pots in a particular position . . . what's wrong with just leaving the tone pots in that position all the time?
Click to expand...

As I said, nothing wrong with that. It's just sometimes I want to make that guitar even darker for a song and when the pot is already at 2-3 I don't have a lot of resolution to play with before it's getting too dark.

I'm usually using presets (Katana and some modellers) and I don't want to modify them (or create new ones) just for that guitar. So easier to swap a cable for that guitar. Also I will not need that special cable if I'm using someone else amp as I will dial the sound using the amp eq.
 
As I said, I don't want to mod the guitar. It's working perfectly except for some situations.
I want to experiment with a resistor/capacitor on a cable first, but I may go a bit further in the future and build a micro inline pedal with a 5-position selector switch having different resistor/capacitor values. Might be useful to not touch your presets/pedals and simply turn a switch to adapt any guitar to them.
 
I would just adjust the tone controls on the amp and then on the guitar. If turning the tone knob down on the guitar makes it too dark, make the tone brighter on the amp, so you get more use out of the tone control on the guitar.
 
donaldr said:
A treble bleed is very useful, specially when you add more gain, and I don't want to get rid of it.
Click to expand...

Oh, I know. I've used them with humbuckers both with and without the resistor. With most singles already having a rather chimey top compared to humbuckers, I guess I don't see the point in it, in my case anyway. I don't use a treble bleed in any of my guitars anymore. After many attempts, and extended trials, I decided it's not for me.
 
Last edited:
I like to have the general range of my guitar dialed in addition to having the use of the controls, not having to use the controls to get the tone usable. So I get what you mean. I prefer using resistors only, no cap. Because that softens the whole signal rather than only chopping off highs with a cap. You can just clip resistors across the hot and ground of your output jack until you find the value you like and then either hardwire a resistor in or change the volume pot to the value which approximates it.
 
Thanks all for your suggestions. Just to recap, I just want to darken my Strat when I'm using my modellers with presets that sound nice with my other guitars. The rest of the time my Strat is not too bright, or I can dial the sound I want on the amp.
 
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