Varitone

[low end fuzz]

is a varitone a good replacement for a tone knob; or work better in conjunction with?

[WezV]

either/or

they work fine alone or with a tone knob.... sometiems nice to have the tone coontrol to tweak it just where you want it - but most dont mess with it too much anyway

[elmo7sharp9]

I built a Varitone into a floor box.

It resonates differently with each guitar I plug into it.

When recording, the Varitone is great for thinning-out space echo guitars,

so that they don't crowd a mix.

You can also wire it "backwards" to give (admittedly less useful) stepped rolloff of highs.

I stuck a switch in to do this, just because I could.

[low end fuzz]

would someone ;such as myself, who solders only out of necesity ,not of enjoyment, benifit from ordering a pre-wired varitone switch? in other words, is this the kind of switch that will give a novice a reason to kill another living person?

i see the schematic; it looks like a bunch of wires on top of each other, but i can never tell the effort until all the stuffs infront of me;

thanx

[elmo7sharp9]

would someone ;such as myself, who solders only out of necesity ,not of enjoyment, benifit from ordering a pre-wired varitone switch? in other words, is this the kind of switch that will give a novice a reason to kill another living person?

i see the schematic; it looks like a bunch of wires on top of each other, but i can never tell the effort until all the stuffs infront of me;

thanx

If you're confident enough to do regular guitar control-cavity wiring,

you'll not need any further skill to wire up a Varitone.

[ansil]

something to consider for a tone control replacement instead of a standard tone control try replacing it with a High pass filter or a dual blend knob. this works really well for seven string guitars and down tuned instruments.

[low end fuzz]

i'm listening; tell me more!

[ansil]

well ok so what you are doing is putting two pots in parallel with each other with a cap strung across them. this first changes your impedance even if your tone is always on ten or max position. so we remove the cap to ground. we take the output from the second lug of volume control and we apply it to a junction of a .0068uf cap and a .1uf now since we gained some volume from the removing of the tone control to ground we will need to compensate for the freq change between two caps. i put a 5k trim pot in series with the .1uf and dial it in so the vol levels are consistent. tie the other ends to the outer lugs of the tone pot then take the output from the second lug. pot at max rotation is big fat honking tone min rotation is slightly thinned out bottom end or tightened up if you are using a seven string. really cuts through. or play at min setting and roll to full for leads. i can draw a schematic for you i have been doing this for around ten years give or take on seven strings and Les Paul neck pickups. i have other tricks as well.

forgot i did this mod as a tutorial years ago for brian to post

http://projectguitar.com/tut/blendmod.htm

[ansil]

i have passive push pull boosts that don't involve cutting the volume back for your normal tone. i utilize a dualganged pot. using a 250k and 1M pot with a toggle or a push pull pot i set it so that i normally play on the lower impedance pot and then when i pull up i get a boost by switching to the higher imp pot. now this will increase your treble ie and noise as well but that is why on the push pull i put a lpf set for around 6khz to 3khz its adjustable and built right onto the push pull pot so you can set it how you like. there is a bit of volume boost doing this. quite a bit really. i started doing stuff like this because no pickups sounded like i wanted them to so i use lpf and hpf to make them do my bidding.

oh and a side note you don't have to change your pots out in the above tutorial. i do this for my own purposes. but i also use emg with high imp pots too as it will just rip your face off.

also they make adjustable capacitors all the way into the 1000pf range or the .001uf. something to consider and you can make your own caps as well the foil and oil method is quite easy.

[ansil]

also something else to note all the tone controls except the ones i have mentioned are shunting freq to ground. the way it works is that instead of a cap and a resistor we are using an inductor cap and resistor. so we are still notching freq to ground although its not as broad its a more narrow notch or steep if you will.

if you think of your tone control as a water control or if your southern a spicket! lol jab at my southern bro's getter done.

a standard tone control is just like a faucet full flow to ground slow flow to ground leaky faucet to ground. and all points in between so we are stealing freq and volume as we turn the tone down where as the varitone is like having an aqueduct and stabbing funnels through your tone and various points. we are still stealing freq to ground but we still have freq above and below this rushing forward to our amplifier. now with a dual ganged pot or two pots we can have a moving funnel throughout the freq range but it will not be quite as sharp as an inductor. Gibson used an inductor to suck out 1khz on the tone knob of their attempt at a strat the m3.

interesting enough is that we can flip the ground and input sides of the moving dual filter and have a reverse filter so that we now see a spike although it would appear as a boost in these frequencies its not as boosting requires amplification.

you can also capacitive couple your pickups to the switch thereby changing the pickups sound only when it is selected to the pot. so you can say make a hot but dark neck pickup sound like a hot tele pickup. great for sweeping.

[low end fuzz]

this might be an interesting little project!

thank you!

[ansil]

welcome but hold on i drew up stuff for you posting now

ok in this pic here is basic guitar wiring for three pickup guitar as labeled with no fancy switching for now we will go with the names of the pickups instead of actual graphic representation

now here is the same thing with a blend mod added note you don't have to ground tone control if you don't have metal knobs

now here is the whole thing with the mystery cap from neck pickup to switch so that its only engaged on neck position and doesn't affect the tone controls at all or the other pickups. the value is up to you i have used a different one for every pickup as they all need some attenuation.

this is a stripped down version of what i have in my guitar now. my ibanez has the push pull pots leds and other stuff but it would take me a bit to draw up that one.

ed

here's another that utilizes a triple ganged pot with three separate wafers. originally it was a 500k but thats ok i changed the wafer in the middle to a 250k and the bottom one to a slightly modified taper 1Meg.

the bridge has a variable low pass filter the middle is stock for the most part. and the neck has our high pass filter mod. now all have their own resistance to ground and the outputs are switched before going to the tone blend knob which could also be done with a Triple ganged pot. not shown is the coil cut on the opposite side of the switch as i use a slightly modified six way blade switch. however recently i have decided to go back to a 4 pos tele style switch

hope you enjoy this

[Tim37]

Ansil i was thinking this would be cool on my strat i did a quick scketch up does this look right too you?

[ansil]

yes although depending on which caps you use you will probably want to put in a small resistor there to keep the balance equal. also the use of a center detent pot helps tremendously. something to consider as well is you are still utilizing a standard tone knob in this circuit as well so you will not get the exact same results as mine but it will still work yes.

something to consider is to utilize the tone switching of the stratocaster like its originally wired. see you don't need a tone knob to roll of treble on the neck or middle pickup they are pretty dark all ready. wire it so its switchable or wait let me draw it up based on your schematic.

ok if you see mine its virtually the same as yours but what i have done is made the blend control the first thing in the line after the volume as this makes a big difference in the response of the circuit it has a chance to blend everything you are giving it. and then at the tail end is the "master tone control" this way the master will also react differently with the volume control.

i have had a few emails about this circuit

if you notice its a triple pot and the pot i have in series with the cap is adjustable but it only works to the bridge pickup and its freq response is preset for a specific freq range[its adjustable but i have mine set so its not on the fly adjustable] and its before the actual impedance to ground. here i am using a true lpf set up differently than a normal tone control and then each pickup has its own pot and impedance to ground then the tone circuit is after the switch selection.

ed

[Tim37]

Thanks i have always wanted a bass cut on a guitar, with my strats i have always rewired them so that the tone knobs worked the bridge and middle not the neck or just use a singel tone but if i do that it leaves a unused knob on the guitar i have always wanted to use it for a base cut i will play with it and see what happens. i think i have some small detent pots laying around some where if i can find them i was wondering exatly what that blue thing in your diagram was.

Thanks a Million man.

Tim

[Tim37]

just got done with the mods very cool.

btw I had a 500k push pull pot so i used it and set it up so that when you pull it out. it turns the bridge pickup on.

[ansil]

cool the blue thing is the trim pot i used on the bridge to set the high freq response limit on the bridge pickup. see i change the impedance of my pickup by changing the pot. i take two pickups that are relatively the same output and change the impedance on them. the cap on the neck that i use limits some bass end anyway which is needed on the neck because a hot neck pickup is always going to be woofy unless specially designed not to be. so with this i set the impedance at 500k with the pot but i use a specific cap for each pickup but i try to tune it 1 octave up from low E string give or take. so when you start riffing on the neck it is a preset eq curve that cuts everything a below the tenth fret by db per octave. its a steep roll off but it does the job. i would never do that in the bridge. but look at fundamentals here.

http://terrydownsmusic.com/technotes/Frequencies/FREQ.HTM look about half way down at the chart

e3 to e7 is the fundamental range so 82.40689 to 1318.51 not a whole hell of a lot here to play with. now figure in the highest note there at double the freq for harmonics because lets face it after 4khz there is not many speakers that are delivering it unless your going hifi or acoustic amp. and then most guitar amps have a corner high freq at 3khz. so just a little over one octave from the 24th fret. so i put my freq range aprox

146.8324 at my neck pickup. this will give you a nice little sound. especially for jazz. check out the live tone on jambalaya on myspace.com/ansilgregory compared to the rhythm track which is the bridge. the breakdown in A about half way through is both pickups on. and of course i tracked with two amps one for the piezo's but thats a different topic sorry got a little off.

so anyway using this formula f= 1/(2PiRc) where f is frequency and r is resistance your pot and c is capacitance. or use this page http://www.muzique.com/schem/filter.htm like i did

now in the schematic blue trim pots [blue because radioshack stocks these the same color and i have a whole pc board with trimmers on it] you put these on the blend pot so that your larger cap which passes more freq so more sound than your smaller cap doesn't walk all over your sound so you can blend the two tones a little closer together volume output wise.

now the second one or the one on the bridge i am using a lpf or low pass filter which says "i will only let frequencies lower than the value you set here pass through unaffected. the ones higher shall be shunted to ground or attenuated at 6db per octave." so lets examine this. if we set up a freq range using a low pass filter at 3kilo hertz or 3000hertz it is saying everything above 3hz will loose 6 decibels per octave now that means 3-6khz will be down like pulling a fader down by 6 decibels it takes 2-3 decibels for the human ear to perceive a double the amount of volume and that takes 10x worth of wattage. so this is a bit steep. and now everything from 6-12khz will be down 12 decibels. so each time it doubles so by the time it gets down to 24khz [not possible on guitar or even to hear anyway] it would be down 18decibels which is quite a bit.

so i make an adjustable lpf for the bridge pickup by putting a small like 1k trim pot in there and use a larger cap to ground. so lets say i want to adjust 6khz to 3khz .052uf and 500ohms is roughly 6.1khz high end response

as i adjust it fully to 1k ohm resistance i will get a response of 3.06khz high end response.

500 ohm resistance in series is nothing on a decent output signal you will never hear it. so this cap to ground is large but the series resistance is small set this with a 1 meg pot and you have a hot as hell bridge pickup with adjustable high freq response. that's why i used a triple ganged pot later so that my volume was consistent on each pickup so if i rolled down the bridge just a bit when i switched pickups even though each had their own pot the taper was the same so the same approximate volume on each roll of was the same. great to get that real smoky strat sound we crave when i coil cut.

now the downside is when you use more than one pickup it will take the impedance of the smallest pot there and reduce it slightly such is the problems with parallel resistance. but that's OK most of us are not looking to bang some shred out on the single coil in the middle or to do some megadeth on the middle single coil. its usually added in with another pickup. for me i like to coil cut the neck and use it with the bridge this makes a more interesting arrangement. if you really want to have some fun do this with a lespaul style guitar and phase the neck and bridge different and use the cap in the neck pickup like i was saying its sick it cancels out some frequencies and adds others total sickness.

also depending on your playing style you can really benefit from dropping the neck pickup bass side down quite a bit and raising the treble side as much as possible. and keep the middle pickup flat all the way across completely parallel to strings. and raise the bridge pickup bass side higher than the treble only slightly. this will give you that SRV and Hendrix pronounced hey i am two stepping my way through the mix sound on the neck. and give you a fat rhythm chug and still leave room for lead side squeals. well time for a bath i stink from being at work all day.

ed

just for shits and giggles since this forum has come so far and i feel the need to educate my fellow players as i have been and continuing to be educated check out the section of amp schematics here

www.schematicheaven.com

look up your favorite marshall or fender or Mesa Boogie and use the above calculator to determine the freq response and curves of each and understand the limits of the amp and the guitar so you can take it further. something else for all you electronics guys

http://www.duncanamps.com/tsc/

duncans tone stack calculator. look at the differences when you move the knobs on your amp. [btw unless you got a serious boutique amp yours will fall into two categories the fender and the marshall as its the classic eq stack and boogie uses them too.]

fender

marshall

boogie

all same basic eq. now where and how they implement them is something else all together. but look at your freq min and max and see why you sound the way you do. realize that after 5.5-6.5 on the treble and your just playing through the treble cap and the rest of the eq is pretty much useless.

look at the carvin legacy

http://www.carvinmuseum.com/pdf/amps/VL100...egacy%20Amp.pdf

depending on which one you use its called the baxandall or simply James in the TSC. plug in your favorite values and look at the eq curves. this will help anyone brave enough or foolish enough to start crunching the numbers on it.

this is why all my favorite amps have the freq curves at every stage written in sharpie on them.

sorry again for ranting

ed

p.s. i hope you enjoy this crazy long response i have gone off the damn deep end again