Silly Reverend Bass Contour Knob Question...

[Nostalgic Distortion]

This is probably going to be considered sacrilege to any Reverend purest out there but I've got a Reverend Volcano & I think I want to do away with the Bass Contour? Basically I want to wire it up from scratch with Gibson vintage Flying V harness so I can put the stock harness in a box & save it in case I ever decide to sell the guitar. Before I go ahead & pull the trigger I wanted to get a bit more information about how exactly the bass knob works?



Basically I'm trying to get some sense of what it's going to sound like with the Gibson style harness before doing anything? I've been told that turning the bass knob all the way down/off would get me pretty close to two volumes & a shared tone but I've also been told that the opposite is true. Personally I think having it all the way down makes more sense as it can get pretty dark with it rolled all the way up but there's surprisingly little information out there on this particular topic.

So if anyone out there can help me out with this I'd very much appreciate it!!!

Thanks in advance.....

 

[stratguy23]

Re: Silly Reverend Bass Contour Knob Question...

The Reverend bass contour control is one of the brand's coolest features, and frankly something that I wish came standard on *all* electric guitars.

I find it useful because, by and large, the standard tone control on electric guitars cuts treble. To me, it makes sense to also have a bass cut control as well. It's a tone knob, and it rolls off bass.

Turning the bass control knob all the way down on a Reverend yields a single-coil-like sound. Very useful, perhaps a cousin to spin-a-split wiring.

Don't lose the bass contour knob - it is a shared tone control, just like the conventional tone control.

With the bass contour knob, you can really tune your guitar's tone to the room. Rolling down a conventional tone control tames the shrill; rolling down the bass contour knob tames the woofy. Woofy 59 neck bothering you? No worries, just roll off some bass.

Or, for a cool trick, play a note or a chord with bass contour down, then swell into the full tone by bringing in bass.

 

[freefrog]

Re: Silly Reverend Bass Contour Knob Question...

wanted to get a bit more information about how exactly the bass knob works?

It works a bit like a crude treble bleed on a volume pot... but without the volume change. It's a 1M pot. To cut the bass, it puts the pickups in series with a 1n capacitor, itself in parallel with the 1M of the pot. When the pot is set on the other side of its tapper, the two lugs of the cap are in contact with each other and it has no effect at all.

It's a refined variable version of an old trick applied by Rickenbacker in some guitars. It's also a variation on the kind of circuit used in some G&L models.

FWIW, a Fender TBX would be a good host for such a circuit: put the bass contour on the 1M part of the pot, mount a regular tone control on the 250k side and that's it...

 

[Nostalgic Distortion]

Re: Silly Reverend Bass Contour Knob Question...

It works a bit like a crude treble bleed on a volume pot... but without the volume change. It's a 1M pot. To cut the bass, it puts the pickups in series with a 1n capacitor, itself in parallel with the 1M of the pot. When the pot is set on the other side of its tapper, the two lugs of the cap are in contact with each other and it has no effect at all.

It's a refined variable version of an old trick applied by Rickenbacker in some guitars. It's also a variation on the kind of circuit used in some G&L models.

FWIW, a Fender TBX would be a good host for such a circuit: put the bass contour on the 1M part of the pot, mount a regular tone control on the 250k side and that's it...

Thanks for that! You have absolutely no idea how hard it was to get a definitive answer on this issue...

I re-wired it with a vintage Gibson style harness last night & it turned out exactly how I wanted it too! I get why people like the bass knob (Athough I wasn't really looking for advice on that particular subject) but I've been playing for a couple decades now & aside from a Buckshot I've never had one on any of my guitars so I don't miss it much? Not having independent volume knobs on a set neck H/H guitar however, is something I miss, & something that I use quite a bit! So overall I'm very happy with the results & since I built the new harness from scratch I can always stick the original back in....