Kent Armstrong "Tone Choke" coil?

Erlend_G

Erlend_G

New member
Hello bros;

I just recieved a "Kent Armstrong Tone Choke" coil, that I bought for fun, from a website.,

It's a rather small (like a pot, without the shaft), black thingy, with two wires. I have no idea how it's supposed to be used;
-but I've read a bit on the net, and found examples of wiring it together with a capacitor; for a "varitone" type of sound.

:)

I guess I could open up one of my guitars, and try wiring it up just for kicks. But I'm not in the mood/energy for experiments.

Anyone know what this thingy's good for?


Thanks alot,
-Erlend ♪
 
Between Bill Lawrence Q filter, Gresco tone Qube, Torres mid boost/cut and so on, there's many small inductors of this kind and they can be used in two main ways:

-in parallel with hot pickups in order to make them less hot by diminishing their inductance. Generally, it involves a 15k to 24k resistor in series with the choke and the whole is connected from hot to ground with an on/off switch;
-as a Varitone choke thanks to an added capacitor: it cuts selectively the frequencies of your choice...

Google "Bill Lawrence Q filter wiring" and you should find a couple of useful schematics.

All that being said, you can think of the "tone choke" as a pickup without magnet(s) nor magnetic poles: it's just a small coil, a kind of dumb pickup (reason why it's called sometimes a "dummy coil").

NOTE - I'm a big fan and addictive user of BIG dummy coils, measuring the inductance of a P90 and not the tinny 1H or 2H of these lil' cubic gizmo's evoked above : a robust inductance is necessary to make a REAL VariTone (vintage style, which doesn't harm the output level) AND it can be used to obtain the sound of pickups in parallel... without parallel wiring. :-P
Good news: a cheap or old pickup without mag(s) and baseplate can be used as this kind of hefty tone choke, if properly wired. Unless you buy a vintage inductor, of course. Here is one, measuring most probably 7.5H per coil: https://images.reverb.com/image/upl...upersize/v1547766257/r40qwdgtndn2kr6xnrb8.jpg

As you can see, it requires some place and explains why pickup winders have opted for smaller coils. ;-)

That's all for the moment, Erlend. Enjoy with your little toy (that I find funny too, BTW: actually, I've more small home made tone chokes than big bad VariTone inductors in my guitars) . <:O)
 
Thanks for an informative and nice answer, freefrog! :) .

I'll certainly test it out one day; -

Rock on, mate! ♪
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top