Les Paul Tone mod to roll off bass?

[jakeac5253]

Unfortunately, there is really no reason to touch the neck pickup's tone control on my Les Paul because it's pretty bassy as it is and I'd really like to be able to use that knob that's just taking up space. Is there a way to roll off bass as well? I believe that I tried a resistor from the CCW lug to the back of the pot hoping that it would be like running a reverse volume mod. I can't really remember what happened, but I remember it wasn't what I wanted. I am also interested in any other simple (cap and resistor) mods to a tone pot to increase its usefulness.

[pdf64]

Can you access the connection between the 2 coils? The tone control can be wired to ground out the coil tap point as it's turn up to 10, turning the pickup to single coil.
Is your pickup too close to the strings? The tone can get too fat and woofy, like the proximity effect on mics, if close up.
It may become a more useful sound if it's lowered, maybe quite a lot lower.

[chipaudette]

If you're willing to put in a pull-pot for your volume (or tone) knob, you can use it to put a cap in series with your pickup. With the knob pushed it, you'd have your stock circuit. With the knob pulled, it would put the cap in series.

I did this to my guitar and I like the effect. It took a little trial and error to find the right value, but you can do the experimentation pretty quickly since the access panel is on the back of the guitar...as opposed to on the front like a Strat, where you'd have to restring the guitar every time you wanted to tweak the cap's value.

What interesting about my particular setup, is that I think that my tone control is in a funny place in my guitar's internal circuit compared to a stock Les Paul setup (it looks like a bit of a hack job inside my late 80s Less Paul). Because of where my tone control is, when I pull my pull-pot to but the cap in the circuit, the tone control has a cool effect...it rolls off the highs as expected, but it also raises the cutoff frequency of the cap as well.

So, the net result on my guitar is that it really skinnies up the sound of the guitar into a nice mid-range zone. I lose a lot of volume doing this, but I like it a lot. It sounds like it's cutting the bass faster than the treble so it really cleans things up if I'm playing with a little dirt in my sound.

Chip

[jakeac5253]

Can you access the connection between the 2 coils? The tone control can be wired to ground out the coil tap point as it's turn up to 10, turning the pickup to single coil.
Is your pickup too close to the strings? The tone can get too fat and woofy, like the proximity effect on mics, if close up.
It may become a more useful sound if it's lowered, maybe quite a lot lower.

Unfortunately the pickups are two conductor But that sounds like an interesting mod and I'd like to hear about it anyway. The neck pickup is quite low in relation to the bridge, and honestly it's a lot better now, but I'm still curious about the mod just for the sake.

If you're willing to put in a pull-pot for your volume (or tone) knob, you can use it to put a cap in series with your pickup. With the knob pushed it, you'd have your stock circuit. With the knob pulled, it would put the cap in series.

I did this to my guitar and I like the effect. It took a little trial and error to find the right value, but you can do the experimentation pretty quickly since the access panel is on the back of the guitar...as opposed to on the front like a Strat, where you'd have to restring the guitar every time you wanted to tweak the cap's value.

What interesting about my particular setup, is that I think that my tone control is in a funny place in my guitar's internal circuit compared to a stock Les Paul setup (it looks like a bit of a hack job inside my late 80s Less Paul). Because of where my tone control is, when I pull my pull-pot to but the cap in the circuit, the tone control has a cool effect...it rolls off the highs as expected, but it also raises the cutoff frequency of the cap as well.

So, the net result on my guitar is that it really skinnies up the sound of the guitar into a nice mid-range zone. I lose a lot of volume doing this, but I like it a lot. It sounds like it's cutting the bass faster than the treble so it really cleans things up if I'm playing with a little dirt in my sound.

Chip

Hmm, that is interesting. How does that work? You said you put the cap across the pickup? I thought putting capacitance across the pickup bled highs like a cable would.

EDIT: ok, I read where you said in series, I was thinking parallel. Very interesting, thank you.

[Mark Hammer]

I put an over-value compensating cap on the volume pot. Normally, one would have something like 220-680pf straddling the input and wiper on the volume pot to let the upper treble pass through as you turn down. If you increase the value to, say 1200-1800pf, then mids pass through as well. The result of this is that your volume control behaves like a bass cut control between around 6-10. Below 6 on the volume it starts to behave more like a volume pot. Very nice for making a bridge HB sound a little more like a P-90 or Tele bridge. On a SC neck pickup, you go straight to the Jimmy Nolen / Nile Rodgers zone.

[David Schwab]

Is there a way to roll off bass as well?

Yes, very easy to do. G&L have passive bass and treble tone controls.

Just copy the bass control on this. The 2nd diagram shows how to wire up the pot (far right).

[Mark Hammer]

Does the bass cut control (well, more to the point, it is a "bass let-in" control) interact with the volume much? It would seem from the diagram that the 1M pot sums with the input leg of the volume pot, such that setting it for higher resistance (less bass "let-in") makes the volume pot seem like it is turned down more.

[David Schwab]

The 1M pot is in series with the signal, so when you turn the bass down (1 meg resistance) the signal goes through the cap and not the pot. The cap rolls off the low end. When you have the bass on full the pot bypasses the cap (zero resistance).

[jakeac5253]

The 1M pot is in series with the signal, so when you turn the bass down (1 meg resistance) the signal goes through the cap and not the pot. The cap rolls off the low end. When you have the bass on full the pot bypasses the cap (zero resistance).

Oh I see, so it's the same physics as a treble bleed volume mod, but just on a separate pot so it functions solely as a tone control?

[David Schwab]

Yes. Changing the cap value changes the frequency where the lows get rolled off. Larger values let more bass through.

The coupling caps on effects and the like work the same way.

I often do this with switches. I have a 5 way switch on a two pickup guitar, and in the 2 and 4 positions I use caps to roll off the low end on the bridge humbucker to get a more single coil tone.

[xonglennao]

Do a treble bleed mod on your master volume. I wired mine parallel but I don't think it really matters. You'd be amazed at what this simple mod will do for your tone though.