Purpose of Capacitor on Push/Pull for coil split

caprae

caprae

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Son's guitar has a 1 humbucker, 1 volume configuration. I went to buy a push/pull to do a coil split on it. The store was out but the tech had one he had used previously.

Now the question. The tech had a 022 cap attached to the third (ground) lug on one end with the other end of the cap going through the closest two switch lugs and to ground on the side of the switch. He then said if it is too bright then I should replace the cap with a larger value which he also gave me.

Is this only something you would use if using this pot as a tone pot and not a volume pot?

If you would use it as a volume pot what is the capacitor doing? I thought it might be some sort of treble bleed but that doesn't appear to be the case. To my untrained ear the C5 sounds just a tad dark (my son likes it) but the split really chimes.

Based on Seymour Duncan schematics if I change this to a series/parallel configuration I would have to remove that cap, correct?

Thank
 
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Re: Purpose of Capacitor on Push/Pull for coil split

Thank you, Greg. That was the conclusion I was starting to come to.
 
Re: Purpose of Capacitor on Push/Pull for coil split

I think it is a treble bleed, but only on the split position, and only at a set amount.

Maybe to keep the single coil sound from being too harsh?

Nifty trick, if you ask me.
 
Re: Purpose of Capacitor on Push/Pull for coil split

Okay, I finally got ahold of the tech that sold me the pot. He said that yes, it was for a tone pot. But also yes, it bleeds off some of the highs, but for both the single and the humbucker. So you were both correct.

New question: since I like the single sound but feel the humbucker is a little dark sounding, I'm wondering if I put the cap from the two prongs on one side to ground on the other, and then put the 3rd pot lug straight to ground would it give me the best of both worlds?

In just playing it again I noticed that the volume drops very quickly once I twist the volume about a quarter turn.

jtougas - I'm in Athens as well. East side.
 
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Re: Purpose of Capacitor on Push/Pull for coil split

You can integrate a capacitor into whatever switching you want to "tune" the switch position. Basically the capacitor is being used as a treble filter.
 
Re: Purpose of Capacitor on Push/Pull for coil split

Bartolini has a wiring hidden away in the schematics where a parallelled hb had a resistor/cap attached in series to make the *tonality* of the parallel sound the same as the series wiring while not effecting the *output* of the parallel wiring, so that a passive pickup could be used with an active pickup with a builtin preamp.




Yeah, that took me a few minutes to chew on, too.
 
Re: Purpose of Capacitor on Push/Pull for coil split

Yeah, that made my brain hurt, but I think I understand it. Going to go play with it.
 
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