Increasing the treble limit on a TBX tone control

[Savoy13]

first off, i just found this place and i am pumped! looks like a great community. i and the soldering burns on my fingers say hello.

i have a strat that is fairly heavily modded and i am not quite satisfied with my tone. the settings (with the mods) that i like are the middle and neck in series with the bridge pick up over the top. i got a tbx tone control on there which i crank to eleven so i can boost the treble and avoid too much muddiness.

the problem is that when i crank the distortion on my orange rocker 30 it is still a little too muddy.

anyone know if it is possible to squeeze a little more treble out of this thing by playing around with the resistor/capacitor values on the tbx without changing the tone?

[David Schwab]

When the TBX is on 10, the cap and the tone pot is out of the circuit.

What value volume pot are you using? If it's 250K, increase it to 500K or 1M.

Putting the pickups in series increases their impedance and makes them dark sounding, so even if you bypass the volume pot, it might still be muddy.

That's why players used to use treble boosters, like the RangeMaster. That might your only alternative.

[Savoy13]

thanks for the reply

i thought about messing with the volume pot but the way i have the bridge pickup wired (i ran a switched hot lead to it completely separate from the rest of the circuit) i get a real cool tone if i back off the volume to like 8 or so. i think that it is just deverting a little more power to the bridge than the neck/mid. i LOVE that tone and i'm scared that i will lose it if i start messing with it.

plus i use the N-Tune onboard tuner in place of the stock vol pot so i can't switch it out. i have wired and wired that thing so many times its a rats nest of wires in there with all the mods.

[cbarrow7625]

Even with the N-tune you can still "bypass" the volume pot to see if the sound brightens up enough. Just disconnect the ground wire from the ground lug of the volume pot. You will still have the resistance of the pot in series with the signal but you will not have the loading effects from it. If doing this simple mod still doesn't give you enough high frequency then you are out of luck trying to get more HF passively, you'll have to go to an EQ or treble booster.

So you have the Neck & Middle in series with the bridge in parallel with that, is that correct? Does that give you a great distortion tone,clean tone or both? Just curious.

[Savoy13]

Originally Posted by cbarrow7625

Even with the N-tune you can still "bypass" the volume pot to see if the sound brightens up enough. Just disconnect the ground wire from the ground lug of the volume pot. You will still have the resistance of the pot in series with the signal but you will not have the loading effects from it. If doing this simple mod still doesn't give you enough high frequency then you are out of luck trying to get more HF passively, you'll have to go to an EQ or treble booster.

So you have the Neck & Middle in series with the bridge in parallel with that, is that correct? Does that give you a great distortion tone,clean tone or both? Just curious.

well i was looking over some data sheets that i got from fender and it looks like my only option (if disconnecting the ground wire doesn't do the job) is to through something like a small rangemaster circuit in there. its a minimal circuit so i'm sure i could get it down small enough to fit.

the N/M in series with the B in parallel is indeed what i like. i have the stock selector in the neck position and my series fader cranked. i have a switch that toggles the bridge completely separately from the rest of the circuitry that allows me to adjust the amount of power to the N/M and B via the master volume.

played clean with both of them at full power it gives a tele-like sound with a little more mids and meatier while keeping most of the attack. what i like to do is dial down the power to the N/M just a touch and crank my dirty channel. it gives a great english rock type of sound. it gives you the great distortion and mids from the "humbucker" and with the extra power to the B you get great clearity and attack as well as thinning out the sound a little

its actually the guitar in my avatar. i use push pull pots to keep it looking stock

[cbarrow7625]

Cool. Thanks. Series fader, huh? What's that all about? Separate volume control for those two pickups in series, series pot for added resistance?

[Savoy13]

Originally Posted by cbarrow7625

Cool. Thanks. Series fader, huh? What's that all about? Separate volume control for those two pickups in series, series pot for added resistance?

i'll just give you the low down on the guitar as a whole (otherwise i will get confused and go off track haha). my whole goal with this guitar was to one very versatile guitar so i don't have to drag 3-5 guitars around every time that i play a show or hit the studio. so i have everything on faders and switches so that i still have the stock sound at the flip of a switch and the turn of a dial.

well here we go. the volume was replaced with the n-tune tuner which i love since i can pull out the push/pull pot and mute everything so no one has to hear the "tuning song".

the middle tone pot was replaced with a push pull pot. on 1 its full on series humbucker mode on 10 its single coil. if i have the stock switch in the N position then it is N/M if it is in B then its M/B in series. i call it "the balls dial." with it i can dial up as much or as little balls in my tone as i want. the obvious draw back is the loss of output in single coil mode but i deal with it. the push pull switch controls the polarity of the middle pick up so that i can mess with phase switching in the 2 and 4 positions.

the last pot was replace with the tbx tone control so i can still get tone adjustment over all with one pot.

then i have the separate switched bridge pu and a kill button (which i really don't get much mileage out of)

the ability to adjust the power to each the N/M or B was a happy accident. the first quarter turn just cuts the N/M a little and leaves the B full. after that first 1/4 turn it acts as a normal volume.

[cbarrow7625]

Originally Posted by Savoy13

the ability to adjust the power to each the N/M or B was a happy accident. the first quarter turn just cuts the N/M a little and leaves the B full. after that first 1/4 turn it acts as a normal volume.

Sounds like you may have the N/M wired normally to the volume pot and the bridge wired directly to the wiper in that setup. Is that the case? I only ask because I have all of my guitars wired up with all kinds of switches & knobs for unconventional connections as well. I'm always looking for a new way to do something different.

[Savoy13]

they are both wired up normally and the B pu has an added hot lead. it is still hooked up to the stock 5-way. when i first wired in the toggle switch it wasn't working so as a trouble shooting measure i ran the switched line directly to the hot lug on the volume pot (if i remember correctly) so i could see if the switch was working right. i liked how it sounded so i kept it that way.

i have wired and rewired this thing so many times that its hard to remember exactly what i did. next time i crack it open i'll let you know for sure though. i try not to open it up too much because i am scared of stripping out the threading in the wood for the pickguard.

how do you have your guitar set up?

[cbarrow7625]

My main guitar is a custom strat-type I built about 12 years ago. It has 4 pickups. it is basically an H/S/S setup with the middle pickup moved slightly closer to the bridge and a 3rd single coil PU on an angle between the Mid & Neck. The 3rd SC is slanted so that the end under the high e string is almost touching the neck PU and the other end is about a 1/2" away from the middle PU.

I have it wired with 2 x 6 position rotary switches and a 5 position strat blade switch. Just a master volume & master tone but I have 6 auxiliary toggle switches that switch in different cap values, move the tone control from the top of the volume pot to the wiper, switch in different caps around the volume, a quick access to the bridge PU switch (just like yours).

The first 6 pos rotary is just for the humbucker (I think I have it limited to only 5 positions right now). In order, the 5 positions are: hum in series, hum in parallel, bottom coil only, top coil only, hum in parallel reverse phase.

The 5 way blade switch is for the neck & 3rd slanted single coil. There I get: neck only, neck & slanted PU in parallel, slanted PU only, Mute All, Neck & slanted PU in Series.

The other 6 position rotary switch acts just like a typical Fender 5 position switch with the exception of the 6th position (treating the neck & slant PU as a single dual coil PU). Bridge, B/M, M, M/N, N, M/N in series.

I can pretty much have any combination of Series & parallel between all 5 coils with the help of the other 6 mini toggles. Not all are useful but it is fun to see what can be coaxed out from different combinations. I'm going to have to steal your idea for the single coil pot when the neck & mid are in series. I'll also check out wiring my "direct to bridge pickup" switch right to the volume pot wiper instead of the normal position.

I also have 2 humbucker, 2 vol/2tone homemade tele w/ strat neck that does some interesting tricks. I'd have ot post a schematic of that one for it to make sense though.