ansil Posted October 9, 2008 Report Share Posted October 9, 2008 Well its been along time since i contributed to the diy comunity here so i am back. Now for th past what fifty years we have had the same controls on guitars. Now why is this is it becuase they are totally awesome and work better than we could dream of? Or is it that guitarist on average fear change more than Baptist preachers. (I grew up IN the bible belt so this isnt' a slam ok go thump somewhere else) Sadly its true most of us would just assume to fade into mediocrity with out tone controls on our fancy belchfire blast o rama guitars we have made at our wonderful projectguitar site. Its funny to see how electronics have grown here and how many people i sucked in here from aron's site. any who i digress. here below is a few examples of circuits i have been explaining to folks below. This is the stripped down version of what i was talking about. here you have a basic lespaul in this case the neck pickup here with the pickup strapped across the volume pot. nothing new here. but now instead of the top lug of the volume pot going to the tone now we sub the tone as a blend pot that is no longer grounded. this basically gives the pickup some room to breathe and now we can blend betwen full range of the pickup and rolling some low end off for some tighter runs on the neck pickup without mudding up the signal too much in the second pic you see bascialy the same setup but this time the resistor is removed and a trim pot is added. now you can tweak this a little more to your liking. these values shown are for specific customers and should only be used as guides to finding out what you like. There is no wrong and right here only what you like hearing when you play and how much control you desire. This is the full on schematic of the lespaul i modified recently. This thing was a tonally dead as a guitar can possibly get. the pickups are very high output treble mid swing on a lespaul but if you touch the original controls it turns into a dull dead instrument. by changing the tone cap to .1uf on the bridge we changed the range of the tone knob's sweep a trick taught by Bruce Bennett. The neck has the Same mod as before now when we roll off the tone knob we get a cleaned up sound on the neck it still has plenty of bottom end but not nearly as much as when you roll the knob back in. The best scenario is when you apply the pickups together in the middle setting with a little knob tweaking you can get a nice woody sound that resembles an acoustic. does it sound like a vintage prewar martin.... Of course not. does it give a useful sound that makes studio guys scratch their heads? Of course. if you have any questions on this feel free to ask,howver its quite simple but extremly usefull. ok time for bed ed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ripthorn Posted October 9, 2008 Report Share Posted October 9, 2008 I love options, the more the better. This gives me some great ideas, but unfortunately, I will have to build another guitar to try it out, darn. Thanks for the very useful info. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim37 Posted October 13, 2008 Report Share Posted October 13, 2008 Ok heres a stupid idea i have had rolling around in my head for a while but haven't ever really researched how about taking like a three knob set up haveing a VTT but theres the twist have th first tone filter the highs as normal then use a coil to filter the lows with the other volume knob ok like i said its just been floating around up there along with idea to build a hardtop mustang and last weeks cheerios Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ansil Posted October 13, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 13, 2008 build it into a box man and try it out see if you like it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim37 Posted October 13, 2008 Report Share Posted October 13, 2008 well at one time you could get some little passive crossovers from radio shack but they don't carry them any more i has a few laying around at one time but i cant find them any way they where bulky so it would have to go in to a box. but if i was gonna do that there are plenty of little eq's out there that would probably do a better job. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ansil Posted October 14, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 14, 2008 i find that if you really want to play your instrument that straight wiring no jacks no nothing straight into a box full of options is the best way to find out what you like. sure its a little time consuming and barbaric but hey nothiungs free man. i once put an ibanez with relay's in for the switching and had like thirteen pins or something ridiculous coming out of it to a custom pedal board with dip switches and knobs and settings. in a nutshell it was one of the hardest craziest things i have ever done. you could step on the smoky setting and get what i call that smoky hendrix tone medium gain inside pickups beautiful tone. then step on the Metal patch and you get full on humbuckers it was quite a few switches but it did amp gain reverb eq and pickup settings all in one and 90% of it was all hardwired analog stuff no digital cause well i was an idiot and wanted to work myself to death. lol. now i pretty much stick with the wiring i did when i first came here the 12 posistion wiring diagram for hum single hum. yields all the tones i need. and couple that with adding in a piezo in the neck pocket and two on the tremblock and the strat quacks crys screams does it all but hum Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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