Treble bleed help.

[Artie]

Yes agreed! For Invader and similar type Humbuckers I use the capacitor only. And will be doing so with a strat project soon!

This is a good point. It would be helpful if people said what technique was used with what pup configuration. Ie., humbuckers, P-90's, or singles. Inquiring minds want to know.

 

[Teleplayer]

My version of a treble bleed is a barely-there type of thing. It is trying to imitate a buffered volume control. I wouldn't suggest it to people looking for a treble bleed because there is little noticeable effect. I use a 220pF capacitor in series with 180k resistor, and its the same on every guitar no matter if it is 250k or 500k volume control and regardless of pickup type. The best thing, is it allows the tone and volume controls work independently, so i can adjust each of the controls without having an obvious interaction.

 

[freefrog]

This is a good point. It would be helpful if people said what technique was used with what pup configuration. Ie., humbuckers, P-90's, or singles. Inquiring minds want to know.

Well... When I've mentioned the Kinman treble bleed circuit as my "go to" recipe, I was implicitely refering to Fender style single coils, since the Kinman TB was initially designed for them...

Now and as presupposed by some answers from our fellow members above, a capacitor alone works well with "high inductance" pickups: humbuckers or P90's.

That said and I was trying to tell it in my previous answer, how a treble bleed behaves is far to depend only on pickups configuration! A same TB will have different effects with 250k or 500k pots, 330pF or 1nF cable capacitance, 1M or 500k input impedance (so if you plug in a Tube Screamer or straight in a Marshall JVM, a same treble bleed won't do the same thing than in a regular 1M input for guitars)... All there factors should be took in account, ideally. IME and IMO. YMMV.


Anyway:

-the higher the value of a treble capacitor, the most high mid frequencies it will reproduce when the volume is lowered. That's why Kinman favors high value caps (1200pF) in series with a resistor: it gives beefier mids when the volume control is lowered and avoids thin weak sounds. The resistor is there to give a rounder shape to the resonant peak, in order to make it not too "present";

-as a matter of fact, a resistor has opposite influences if it's in series or in parallel with the treble bleed cap... In series, it will tame the action of the cap. In parallel, it will enhance it... that's why the Duncan recipe relies on low value caps: with a high capacitance treble bleed, the parallel resistor would make the sound way too "peaky" when the volume is lowered.

..example of indirect consequence of all this nonsense: if a 250k volume pot is set @ "half resistance" (125k, 5/10 for a lin pot), a 1200pF in series with a 120k resistor should have almost the same effect than a 120pF in parallel with the same 120k resistor....

FWIW: another wordy attempt to share.

Might post a couple of 5spice sims if time permits... In the meantime, Artie, good luck in your experiments.

 

[Ashurbanipal]

This is a good point. It would be helpful if people said what technique was used with what pup configuration. Ie., humbuckers, P-90's, or singles. Inquiring minds want to know.

My Kinman'd guitars are HSS (hum is full size) 500k volume/tone; and HH with two 500k volumes. Interestingly, my single hum superstrat (1 500k volume) is without the mod, didn't need it.

 

[Artie]

FWIW: another wordy attempt to share.

And I appreciate it. It's funny that in all these years, I've never messed with treble bleed. I'm always either in arm's length of my amp, or running into my SFX-01, (set to unity gain as a buffer), into a nice Boss FV-500H volume pedal. My guitars are always "dimed." But I need to learn this in order to help my customers.

 

[blueman335]

Kinman is my treble bleed of choice.

 

[Coma]

I built my treble bleed so I can swap values without having to solder. It's not pretty but it does teh job very well. I'll post som pictured after work, if you're interested

 

[Artie]

I built my treble bleed so I can swap values without having to solder. It's not pretty but it does teh job very well. I'll post som pictured after work, if you're interested

Sure. Always nice to see how others do things. Thanks.

P.S. I'm planning on omitting the middle tone, (temporarily), and using that hole to bring a couple wires out to a proto board, where I can try different configurations.

 

[Coma]

Here it is. Serial wiring. I've forgotten the value of the resistor but that can be sussed out from the markings, of course. It's far from transparent but the guitar in question is tuned to C so it serves its purpose.

What I've done is connect the two wires from the pot to that 2x4 sugar cube and then just plugged the legs from the components into the corresponding holes. The 'cube itself is attached to the body with a double-sided sticky pad, so it can easily be uninstalled without leaving any marks. And swapping to new values is dead easy. And requires no soldering whatsoever inside the control cavity.

 

[Artie]

Ah. Nice and simple. On a Strat, one could do the little block in the trem cavity.

 

[Drak]

Look up the V-Treb.
It's a variable treble bleed circuit already built onto a pot.
Most places that supply pots should have them.
Last time I was ordering some pots I saw it listed and bought a few, have yet to install any of them tho.
There is one single YT on it tho.

 

[Artie]

Yeah. I was looking at that too. GuitarElectronics has it for $10. But I think I'd prefer to try my own values, and see what works best for me. Cool product nonetheless.