Treble-bleed kits... Which ones are the best?

IanBallard

IanBallard

New member
I've seen a lot of them for sale, but I'm not sure which one I should get. I'm about done dealing with this volume pot that bleeds signal all the way down and I'm gonna have to replace it. I'd like to add a treble-bleed kit, since I like to use the volume knob to clean up my tone. I love my Hybrid/A8 but the treble is a little too attenuated and I heard these kits also boost treble some with the volume all the up. What do you guys think?
 
Re: Treble-bleed kits... Which ones are the best?

The kits normally have no impact on tone when volume is at max.

Different people like different curves on the bleed on different pickups, so I'm not sure there's one perfect kit. The capacitor and resistor need to be matched to the potentiometer used. A 600K pot doesn't work well with the same values as a 400K...
 
Re: Treble-bleed kits... Which ones are the best?

rCzfP
 
Re: Treble-bleed kits... Which ones are the best?

Despair said:
The kits normally have no impact on tone when volume is at max.

Different people like different curves on the bleed on different pickups, so I'm not sure there's one perfect kit. The capacitor and resistor need to be matched to the potentiometer used. A 600K pot doesn't work well with the same values as a 400K...
Click to expand...

Bournes low-fric pots. They're supposed to be rigidly engineered compared to Taiwanese CTS stuff, so the value should be pretty good. I never tested mine for sure. The fact that this thing is bleeding volume at "0" really isn't that big of a deal, but I'd like to retain my treble response as best as possible. I'd rather have a thicker pickup at the bridge than an icepick though. I'm content. For a "500k" pot, what cap/res combo is the best for a humbucker?
 
Re: Treble-bleed kits... Which ones are the best?

I'm partial to the Kinman treble bleed, which is a .0012uf cap in series (not parallel) with a 130k resistor. .0012's are a little hard to find but I've found .001's work just fine. It's designed to work with 250k pots for Strats but it seems to work great on 500k's too to my ear.

Like other treble bleeds, it has no effect with the vol dimed. The only way you can get a treble boost on 10 is to lower the value of the tone pot cap. Or switch to a higher value pot.
 
Re: Treble-bleed kits... Which ones are the best?

Thanks! I'll check it out. I don't use a tone pot, it's straight to the volume.
 
Re: Treble-bleed kits... Which ones are the best?

Well, it was wired up with cloth push-back wire. That's about as 50's as my guitar gets. It's more like "Early 80's" ;)
 
Re: Treble-bleed kits... Which ones are the best?

You should also look for 1 meg pot to get more highs at max.
 
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