Tele pot values.

[Chuck H]

How can I attempt to understand it, if I don't know what to hear.. I don't have 'guitar buddies' who can show me, a gtr shop I could talk to s'one in (& hear xyz).. is my point nosaj. As I said I dont -need- to understand "resonant peaks".. "compressed top end".. "treble roll off".. "scooped mids" in order to play a guitar well & be happy. I don't need to understand how my PC works in order to use it well, do I? I do try.. scooped mids for eg: Ive tried zillions of times to think of what it possibly means relative to something heard.. so I dial my Twin Reverb tone knobs here & those there to try & understand it.. but even still I cannot make any sense of what the fk these two words mean.

Sounds to me like a rare and enviable bliss! I think there are two types of guitar players. The ones that try to understand all the workings of tone (most of us here) and the ones that just twiddle knobs until something sounds musical and then they play. The latter are usually better and more musical players FWIW, BUT... They NEED guys like us to make the gear so they don't have to have bad tone

[Sea Chief]

Hi Chuck H,

appreciate the effort to put these 3 graphs up.. but its like looking at a page of russian to me. For eg I read 'tone connected to top of pot'.. & I'm at a brick wall in 2 seconds. My apologies but I just don't understand what, why or how these lines plus odd sentences are all about, not the remotest idea.

[Sea Chief]

Sounds to me like a rare and enviable bliss! I think there are two types of guitar players. The ones that try to understand all the workings of tone (most of us here) and the ones that just twiddle knobs until something sounds musical and then they play. The latter are usually better and more musical players FWIW, BUT... They NEED guys like us to make the gear so they don't have to have bad tone

Perfectly succinctly summed up. Apart from the bit where I'm meant to be a better player than you! Honestly as much as I love guitars & tone as much as anyone on here.. it just conspires against me & I just dont think I'll ever be able to achieve it.

[Chuck H]

So, looking at the graphs above it seems that "50's" wiring only really preserves top end when the tone control is in use!?! That is, with the guitar volume on 8 and the tone control on 5 there is indeed more treble with the 50's wiring. But with the volume at 8 and the tone control full up there's no significant difference between them. Just another goofy thing for those on their mojo driven tone quests I think. Considering that preserving top end when used is sort of the antithesis of what the tone control is supposed to do I can see why they stopped using this wiring 60+ years ago

Oh... And the 50's wiring is much worse about not cutting treble until late in it's travel than when the tone control is behind the volume in the circuit. If eliminating the switch like action is part of the goal here I would put it back to NOT 50's wiring as a start. If fact if my intuition isn't too far off Id say that for this case a A250k NO LOAD tone pot with a .022uf cap would be best. If the no load is too bright you can solder a 470k resistor from where the .022uf cap connects to the tone pot to ground. Then relative some of the more recent discussion I would rig an audio taper volume pot with the 150k/680p treble bleed. This should act sort of like a linear pot that doesn't lose treble as it's turned down. BOOM! Have your cake and eat it too brother. Bob's your uncle.

[Sea Chief]

Ok I'm trying to understand your last post. I don't know what a 'no load 250k pot' is.. in fact Ive never heard of one, seems odd having made amps etc. Now my ears -forget the graphs for just a moment- can only tell a mite of difference between 50's wiring & as it was. So I'm not into the realms of minutiae discrepencies the mojo brigade are, such fine detail is just n/a for me. Its far more obvious dark dull > vs > brite treble I'm investigating, as blatent as this. What I can hear, and this has been good, is the 680pf + 150k. Now I can turn down the vol & the tone doesn't seem to change! wow. Where has this been all my life- very odd.

This leads to one BIG nagging Q, maybe just for me in this mud I seem constantly stuck in re. dark tone. Why why why wouldn't this be put in -as stock- on every guitar then?? such a simple addition of £1 worth of time & bits on a £300 gtr. It just doesn't make sense not to. Even if the cheaper ones it might be left off from a mfr financial-pov.. but on gibsons/ fenders costing £500+ its a miniscule £addition which entirely changes the nature/ connection between player > amp.. leading to alot of positive benefits. I mean even adding £10 to the gtr's cost.. seems such a total & complete no-brainer.

More mysteries of electric gtrs for me- I'll never work it out. But I'll keep trying to.

[Dave H]

More mysteries of electric gtrs for me- I'll never work it out. But I'll keep trying to.

You and me both
We're all trying to work it out. That's why the forum has been going for over 20 years.

[Sea Chief]

If I ask you chaps whether you have one of these cap/resistor additions.. & I get a 'nah..' my head will go into uncharted bemusement & it might just pop or I might go full-on mentally challenged, so I won't. I shall leave it & stick with a positive result of doing this mod. Which shouldn't be a mod.

Thanks so much fellas- I shall tinker away now in a lighter place! result.

[eschertron]

So, looking at the graphs above it seems that "50's" wiring only really preserves top end when the tone control is in use!?! That is, with the guitar volume on 8 and the tone control on 5 there is indeed more treble with the 50's wiring. But with the volume at 8 and the tone control full up there's no significant difference between them.

Here's the trick I sometimes employ, because on most of my guitars there's a huge change in brightness between 9 (9 1/2?) and 10 on the volume knob:

I set the amp up to sound good (tone- and loudness- wise) with the guitar's vol knob on 7. Then as I play, I can adjust the volume up and down with relatively little change in the brightness. Only when I go to 10 does the brightness peak. Sometimes too much,sometimes just enough to push the guitar to the front, so to speak. Maybe there's some of that 'treble compression' mentioned above, going on in certain happy combinations.

Bottom line - using something other than vol knob all the way up as a baseline, I can get more even control on my (or should I say, any) guitar. hth.

[Sea Chief]

Hi escherton.

Ah yes understood- but I'm doing this with one of my 2 amps.. a 5F1 Champ, no tone knob. I put a 220pf bright cap on its vol pot too.

[Chuck H]

A big reasons the 150k/680p treble bleed circuit isn't included on stock guitars are:

1) It really kludges the taper of the volume control. Some guys that use higher gain need to work the knob between settings of .5 and 1.5 to get a clean tone!!! And it's really jumpy in that small range.

2) The ideal capacitor value is relative to the guitar cord length. Though 680p is a decent all round value for this.

Some guitar DO have a capacitor across the volume pot. Some Fender models did intermittently through history, most Ibanez have a 330p cap and PRS uses a 180p cap. No one I know of is using the parallel resistor though. As I said, it makes the taper of even 10% audio pots unusable for higher gain work if you want to dial down to clean. Otherwise it's a great benefit and there are certainly a lot of players that don't need finite adjustment in the lowest settings. I, for one, do. So I don't use the 150k parallel resistor.

Like I said before, if using the 150k/680p circuit on your linear taper pot starts to bug you, you can get an audio taper pot with that circuit and it will be more similar to a normal linear taper. Just for future reference.

[Chuck H]

Here's the trick I sometimes employ, because on most of my guitars there's a huge change in brightness between 9 (9 1/2?) and 10 on the volume knob:

I set the amp up to sound good (tone- and loudness- wise) with the guitar's vol knob on 7. Then as I play, I can adjust the volume up and down with relatively little change in the brightness. Only when I go to 10 does the brightness peak. Sometimes too much,sometimes just enough to push the guitar to the front, so to speak. Maybe there's some of that 'treble compression' mentioned above, going on in certain happy combinations.

Bottom line - using something other than vol knob all the way up as a baseline, I can get more even control on my (or should I say, any) guitar. hth.

That's a great method sir! Unfortunately it doesn't work for many players. Me among them. I do like the touchy harmonic, high gain rock sound. Not "metal" uber gain stuff, but still... I pretty much need the guitar wide open to get there as my base line tone.

[eschertron]

That's a great method sir! Unfortunately it doesn't work for many players. Me among them. I do like the touchy harmonic, high gain rock sound. Not "metal" uber gain stuff, but still... I pretty much need the guitar wide open to get there as my base line tone.

Caveat: I did say 'sometimes'. For much stuff, I find the guitar's vol knob pegged and I still want more. At that point I'm reaching for the amp controls anyway, and any tone adjustments can be made there. I didn't realize SC was playing through a 5F1. Not prized for its 'chime', is it? More of a bluesy, snarling-dog tone if cranked enough!

I think the balance between volume control and HF rolloff is one many - if not all - players struggle with. I've been inside most of the guitars I've owned to try and mitigate the problem. Not always successfully. Still questing, and yes, it's a conscious choice to put the guitar vol knob on 7 versus 10, and not without contingencies. Sometimes we have to sweat and bleed for our art

[52 Bill]

Just as a point of reference, I just fixed an original 1969 Fender Telecaster. The pots were both 1 Meg Audio and the volume pot had a 0.001 bleeder cap.

[Sea Chief]

Just as a point of reference, I just fixed an original 1969 Fender Telecaster. The pots were both 1 Meg Audio and the volume pot had a 0.001 bleeder cap.

Crikey 1 meg? so what did the original 50's butterscotch jobs have? & do the reissues follow suit.. I had a cij one & it seemed to do the same old turn vol down a bit & URGH bass envelops everything to unuseable as usual.

I can't find this 'caveat' issue to the 680pf/150r addition, i seem to turn vol down a bit, then down to 5, & no nasty suprises or jumps.

Anyway so be it- Ive found a little gem, for me, I wish I d known of decades ago. Cheers to Chuck H for the explanations, Dave H, JazzP & escherton.. a very worthwhile thread.

[Chuck H]

Well... Just for fun I put together this plot chart. I don't think it's hard to understand. YMMV

And I learned a thing or two while doing it. For one, it occurs to me that the dB scale is graduated like it is for good reason. Notice that the plain A10 pots non linear voltage division makes for a linear rise in dB. Obviously that can't be a coincidence. I just never understood the logic of the dB scale before this.

You can see just how bad the plot is for the linear pot with the 150k. With any real gain going it must be very clumsy in the lower numbers of it's adjustment. And, as I mentioned, using an audio taper pot with the 150k/680p circuit gets closer to a useful taper. Again, YMMV.

Cheers and enjoy,.. Or not