Potentiometers and Tonal Tailoring Wiring Circuits...

[WERNER 1]

In the process of working through my "Tone Search" with my Charvel DK-24 (Alder Body, Maple/Maple Neck, H/H, OFR ) I started taking a closer look at all of the electronic components and wiring and had a few questions and thoughts for some of the guys on here who are a bit more knowledgable in the tonal effects of the electronic circuitry as a whole...

The issue I'm having is that this guitar is inherently "Bright" and "Thin" sounding with pickups that "normally" sound good in other guitars.. My thought was to try and manipulate the overall tonality of the guitar to make it sound warmer/fuller so that it would accept the more common pickups that I and others would typically use for any given style of music or specific tone.

I will preface all of this by saying I know that alot of this can be compensated by amp/eq adjustments, but the less major tweaking that has to be done is always a plus. (Knowing full well that a Tele is not going to sound like a Les Paul right out of the gate..)

So diving in to the electronics of my DK-24 it's a pretty simple set up. 1 Master Volume, 1 Master Tone, and a 5-way super switch (4-pole). Upon closer inspection it looks like the Vol Pot is a 500k, and the Tone pot is what I'm assuming to be a 250'ishk BUT.... It has a No Load/Detent in the full CW (Clock Wise) position which essentially takes it out of the circuit/equasion.

My thoughts moving forward are to still use a 500k (Maybe a 300+k) Vol. Pot, and a regular 250k Tone Pot w/.022mfd cap. I will also be adding an oversized brass block to the OFR.

The Ironic part is that I have a USA Custom Shop Warren DeMartini "Crossed Swords" guitar that is very similar in make up (Alder body, Maple/Maple Neck, OFR (No brass Block) .. and that thing sounds great. Major differences are: RTM pickup and 1 Master volume ... scratching my head on that one

Any thoughts on all this?

 

[zizyphus]

What pickups are in the Dinky? Sounds like you're familiar with them already and have played them in other guitars, but I'm just curious

For the issue you're describing, changing pots sounds like a good place to start, particularly the no-load tone pot. I'd start there before messing with the volume pot. Swapping out the no-load pot for a normal 500k pot will cut the resistance your pickups see from 500k to 250k, without even changing the volume pot as well.

The brass block mod you've mentioned will also help, but IME, hardware changes like that make a more incremental difference than an electronics change does, while simultaneously being much more expensive.

Another simple fix is to just roll the tone off a little bit. There's no reason to keep it at 10 all the time. Do you like the sound when you roll some treble off?

On that note, one thing I've done in some guitars is to use a rather low cap value, and to keep the tone knob <10 at all times. With a lower value tone cap, you don't get as aggressive of a treble rolloff, so you don't get that weird problem where your tone goes from overly bright/ harsh at 10 to muffled / underwater at 7. It gives you a smaller, but potentially more usable, range of tones, depending on what you want.
__PRESENT

 

[beaubrummels]

I would just put a 250k volume in and leave the rest alone. Being able to take the tone control out of circuit is very very handy for certain pickups and certain music.

Check the volume pot with a meter on the DiMartini - it might be 250k.

 

[Clint 55]

^ 2nd. Dumb do go and make your tone work worse when you can just put the no load on 9 if you want it in the circuit.

 

[WERNER 1]

What pickups are in the Dinky? Sounds like you're familiar with them already and have played them in other guitars, but I'm just curious

For the issue you're describing, changing pots sounds like a good place to start, particularly the no-load tone pot. I'd start there before messing with the volume pot. Swapping out the no-load pot for a normal 500k pot will cut the resistance your pickups see from 500k to 250k, without even changing the volume pot as well.

The brass block mod you've mentioned will also help, but IME, hardware changes like that make a more incremental difference than an electronics change does, while simultaneously being much more expensive.

Another simple fix is to just roll the tone off a little bit. There's no reason to keep it at 10 all the time. Do you like the sound when you roll some treble off?

On that note, one thing I've done in some guitars is to use a rather low cap value, and to keep the tone knob <10 at all times. With a lower value tone cap, you don't get as aggressive of a treble rolloff, so you don't get that weird problem where your tone goes from overly bright/ harsh at 10 to muffled / underwater at 7. It gives you a smaller, but potentially more usable, range of tones, depending on what you want.
__PRESENT

Pickups - Sorry, forgot to add that,.. Full Shred in the Bridge, and Jazz in the neck (Another Ironic part is that almost ALL of my Les Pauls have the Jazz in the neck and it works great for me in those.. I know, different wood make up and all that...)

Brass Block - Not a huge change,.... but more the some of all it's parts sort of thing ..

Tone Pot - I think I'm going to go straight to a 250k (and yes maybe a .015 mfd. cap) and see what that yields :dunno:

Rolling off Tone - Yeah,.. I'm more of a wide open kind of guy ... but I do at least need to test that out and see what the effect/change is.

DeMartini Vol. Pot - I do need to double check that,.. maybe they pulled a fast one on me

Clint 55 - When you back off of the Detent,.. it is only around 256k (Not full 500k ... if it is a true 500k pot,.. who knows, I'm guessing that it's a 250k but I ran the numbers on it and nothing comes up. But I need to test that as well just to see what the results are

 

[Clint 55]

Just lower your volume pot value. Your tone already works perfectly. You have the option to have it almost exactly at 250k with the knob on 9, or you can put it on 10 for a little edge. What would putting a regular 250k in there and lowering your range achieve?

 

[freefrog]

In the process of working through my "Tone Search" with my Charvel DK-24 (Alder Body, Maple/Maple Neck, H/H, OFR ) I started taking a closer look at all of the electronic components and wiring and had a few questions and thoughts for some of the guys on here who are a bit more knowledgable in the tonal effects of the electronic circuitry as a whole...

The issue I'm having is that this guitar is inherently "Bright" and "Thin" sounding with pickups that "normally" sound good in other guitars.. My thought was to try and manipulate the overall tonality of the guitar to make it sound warmer/fuller so that it would accept the more common pickups that I and others would typically use for any given style of music or specific tone.

[...]

Any thoughts on all this?

Yes, I've a few thoughts to share.

With passive pickups, the "electronic circuitry as a whole" doesn't involve resistance only: perceived brigthness also depends on inductance and capacitance. More of these = darker, mellower tone.

Inductance is a fixed parameter embedded in the specs of a PU. It can be manipulated to some extent with wiring and added components but there's not much room here.

Capacitance is mainly defined by the lenght of the cable used to plug the guitar...

If this statement is too abstract, just watch this vid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2sjeVQpS94

Then consider this: cables alter high frequencies because they exhibit "stray capacitance". (from less than 20pF to more than 100 pF per foot, according to the quality of the product in most cases).

IOW, a guitar cable is not only a "conductor". Unvoluntarily, it's also a kind of long tubular capacitor.

Consequence: the tone of passive pickups can be softened thanks to a long cable... or to mere cheap small caps wired in parallel with the pickups (IOW: between their hot and ground).

120 meters of cable would have the same tonal effect than a tone pot @ zero.

The 200' of wire used here most probably measure around 10nF:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BmkaS91NHQ

If we want to emulate 6m of cable, what we need is a 1nF cap (= 1000 picofarad = 0.001µF). That's a good starting point to hear what stay capacitance does to the tone - and to soften pickups heard as too bright. Adjust to taste with more or less capacitance than this according to the effect desired.

The theory behind is detailed there:

http://zerocapcable.com/?page_id=209

Page to take with a grain of salt since it's on a commercial website meant to promote a "no cap cable"... Objectively, stray capacitance is not always a bad thing and can even be good... when a sound is felt as too bright, for example.

So, when I "tune" a guitar circuit, I always take capacitance in account. it's not a panacea but it's not a parameter to neglect either.

Note that as more capacitance rises the "Q factor" of the resonant peak(s) characterizing passive pickups, a manipulation of the overall resistive load might be necessary in parallel. IOW, if the sound gets too nasal with a high capacitive load, less resistance from the pots will correct this effect.

Sorry for the oceanic post - and for the rambling : people here probably know that capacitance is one of my hobby horses in discussions about guitar tones...