Tinkering with caps & pots on my strats...

[mxTx]

Hi all,
Looking to tinker with the electronics in a couple of my guitars... one HH strat and the other just one humbucker strat. In both cases, I think I'd primarily like to tone down the treble, but also curious as to what else I could achieve through adding resistors and/or caps ... I've only messed around with swapping pickups before, so I was hoping for some more clarification on a few things...

In the case of having a tone pot... is having it all the way on full the same as not having a tone pot at all or does it still noticeably effect the sound?

What would be the best way to tame the high end on the HH strat that has a volume and tone? and the best way on the one humbucker strat that just has one volume? I have 500k pots on everything right now... I'm assuming part of the solution would be swapping to 250k?

Thanks for reading and any feedback/suggestions!

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

Re: Tinkering with caps & pots on my strats...

In the case of having a tone pot... is having it all the way on full the same as not having a tone pot at all or does it still noticeably effect the sound?

In theory, assuming your pot has a high enough value, having the tone control on 10 should remove the cap from the circuit.

But caps have an impedance, and at the resonance of the circuit they form with the pickup, a cap can appear as a piece of wire. This allows the resistance of the pot to affect the treble response.

But I have a bass with a three way switch to chose between two caps and to remove the tone control. I can’t hear a difference between a 500k pot on 10 and the circuit taken out of the signal path.

What would be the best way to tame the high end on the HH strat that has a volume and tone? and the best way on the one humbucker strat that just has one volume? I have 500k pots on everything right now... I'm assuming part of the solution would be swapping to 250k?

Turn the treble down on your amp?

Try a 250k pot. Or connect a 470k resistor from hot to ground. That will drop the resistance of the pot to around 242k.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[mxTx]

Re: Tinkering with caps & pots on my strats...

In theory, assuming your pot has a high enough value, having the tone control on 10 should remove the cap from the circuit.

Interesting... Thanks! I've heard people just hiding their tone pot(s) on full in the cavity and wondered if it was at all due to keeping that tone vs. removing it all together.

Turn the treble down on your amp?

Zaaaaang! Maybe "tone down the treble" wasn't the best way to describe what I'm looking to accomplish... how about "remove a dash of ice-picky-ness"? probably not much better of a description, but wanted to see if how much playing around with the other electronics could change things before I potentially swap the pickup(s) all together.

Try a 250k pot. Or connect a 470k resistor from hot to ground. That will drop the resistance of the pot to around 242k.

Thanks! I have a few 250k pots laying around I could try... for the HH strat with a volume and tone pot, might you suggest 250k for both?

 

[EDX]

Re: Tinkering with caps & pots on my strats...

you could try lowering the value of the cap, most wirings reccommend a .047uf cap for humbuckers but honestly i find it overkill and there's a lot of range i would never use, so i run myself a .022uf cap as runing it with pot at 0 is close to a .047uf cap with pot at 5, it offers finer control.

you can add a rotary switch to swap out tone caps for your tone knob.

 

[Jacew]

Re: Tinkering with caps & pots on my strats...

In theory, assuming your pot has a high enough value, having the tone control on 10 should remove the cap from the circuit.

But caps have an impedance, and at the resonance of the circuit they form with the pickup, a cap can appear as a piece of wire. This allows the resistance of the pot to affect the treble response.

But I have a bass with a three way switch to chose between two caps and to remove the tone control. I can’t hear a difference between a 500k pot on 10 and the circuit taken out of the signal path.




Turn the treble down on your amp?

Try a 250k pot. Or connect a 470k resistor from hot to ground. That will drop the resistance of the pot to around 242k.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

A bit overkill maybe. I would try 1M resistor first, that would put it between 250k and 500k pot.