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Everyone,
I just got back from the Arlington guitar show where I demo'ed my Strat (1997 NC Affinity) with the variable resonance tone control I have been working on. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive with multiple players. Sounded fabulous through high-end tube amps.
The goal of this demo was to demonstrate the concept using only off-the-shelf parts any guitar tech could install. The Tone control gives one-knob control of the pickup resonant frequency from about 1.4 KHz to over 5 KHz. This covers Gibson humbucker tonality through Tele through bright Strat. In positions 2 and 4 the resonance shifts up a bit because of the parallel pickups and covers about 2 KHz to over 6 Khz, which gives incredible "quack." The resonance can be switched out to provide a flat pickup response past 8 KHz.
The 3 pickups were generic Chinese dual rail single coil-sized humbucking pickups which were about $8.50 each shipped. The key reason for using these was because in parallel coil mode these had low enough inductance and stray capacitance to make the technique work. The surprise was that these pickups sounded fabulous when in this circuit.
The key electronic component was a Creation Audio Labs Redeemer buffer. This both buffers the pickup signal and provides a low impedance output to work the variable capacitor feature.
Besides the buffer, the tone pot, and volume pot, there are two capacitors and two resistors needed for this to work. The schematic shows three caps but the Redeemer has an input cap so I deleted the 100 nF cap. I put a switch on the volume pot for lowpass/resonant mode with an extra resistor to allow hi-fi flat response to over 8 Khz, for recording/plugins.
Here's the schematic.
Redeemer Buffer with Resonance- White Rail.pdf
If you want some ideas on how this works, please refer to my two posts. One is on variable resonance pickups Variable Resonance Pickups - Some Prior Art and Links,
and one is on medium Z pickups with gain http://music-electronics-forum.com/t41094/. For this build I used conventional pickups and no gain.
Not all of you read the Pickup Makers forum, so I thought this would be of general guitar tech interest.
To make this technique work, you need to know the inductance, DC resistance, and stray capacitance to ground of the pickup windings. Using Circuitlab, you can simulate the response and pick the correct resistors and caps to get the resonance range you want. But you can generally make this work with any pickup with a reasonably low inductance, below 1.5 Henries. Many "vintage" or low-wind humbuckers will fit the bill when the coils are paralleled.
Take care and questions/comments are welcome,
Charlie
I just got back from the Arlington guitar show where I demo'ed my Strat (1997 NC Affinity) with the variable resonance tone control I have been working on. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive with multiple players. Sounded fabulous through high-end tube amps.
The goal of this demo was to demonstrate the concept using only off-the-shelf parts any guitar tech could install. The Tone control gives one-knob control of the pickup resonant frequency from about 1.4 KHz to over 5 KHz. This covers Gibson humbucker tonality through Tele through bright Strat. In positions 2 and 4 the resonance shifts up a bit because of the parallel pickups and covers about 2 KHz to over 6 Khz, which gives incredible "quack." The resonance can be switched out to provide a flat pickup response past 8 KHz.
The 3 pickups were generic Chinese dual rail single coil-sized humbucking pickups which were about $8.50 each shipped. The key reason for using these was because in parallel coil mode these had low enough inductance and stray capacitance to make the technique work. The surprise was that these pickups sounded fabulous when in this circuit.
The key electronic component was a Creation Audio Labs Redeemer buffer. This both buffers the pickup signal and provides a low impedance output to work the variable capacitor feature.
Besides the buffer, the tone pot, and volume pot, there are two capacitors and two resistors needed for this to work. The schematic shows three caps but the Redeemer has an input cap so I deleted the 100 nF cap. I put a switch on the volume pot for lowpass/resonant mode with an extra resistor to allow hi-fi flat response to over 8 Khz, for recording/plugins.
Here's the schematic.
Redeemer Buffer with Resonance- White Rail.pdf
If you want some ideas on how this works, please refer to my two posts. One is on variable resonance pickups Variable Resonance Pickups - Some Prior Art and Links,
and one is on medium Z pickups with gain http://music-electronics-forum.com/t41094/. For this build I used conventional pickups and no gain.
Not all of you read the Pickup Makers forum, so I thought this would be of general guitar tech interest.
To make this technique work, you need to know the inductance, DC resistance, and stray capacitance to ground of the pickup windings. Using Circuitlab, you can simulate the response and pick the correct resistors and caps to get the resonance range you want. But you can generally make this work with any pickup with a reasonably low inductance, below 1.5 Henries. Many "vintage" or low-wind humbuckers will fit the bill when the coils are paralleled.
Take care and questions/comments are welcome,
Charlie
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