Paul Marossy

_{Another very common misconception people like to perpetuate is that pickup pole pieces have to be directly under the strings or it won't work right. Not true. They can be pretty far off on humbuckers and it will still work fine, especially if you can adjust the individual pole pieces. All the string has to do is pass through the magnetic field, which is not some kind of very narrow thing, it's much broader than people seem to think.}

_{I have found that it matters more on single coils. But even then it can still be considerably off before it causes problems.}

i wouldnt worry too much about the caps. theres a ton of mojo credited to caps thers better places to focus your attention

I agree, but some people seem to think it's a really big deal. You can get FAR more out of changing the speaker than one brand of coupling cap over another. And let's not forget about the output transformer. It can have a big influence on the sound too depending on how it saturates.

i have always though it would be fun to design a amp with 6v6 in the preamp section run a 12ax7 in to a 6v6 (much like a champ) then regulate that down then run in to a good clean power amp. use the 6v6 in the preamp section to create power tube distortion. if you could build something like that it should have a nice bluesy sound at managable volume levels.

I like the "Octal Fatness". It has a 6SJ7 on the input into a 12AX7 which feeds a single 6V6 as I built it (power tube section is flexible). It gets nice bluesy to mildly distorted sounds. It's the only DIY build I have left. I'll never sell it LOL.

I've found that my ears generally appreciate the later-60s to 70s tone more than the 50s and early 60s stuff. I'm not a fan of speaker distortion as it turns out, or just pure fuzz pedals. I much prefer tube distortion. As an example I love Hendrix's typical rhythm tone, but his fuzzed-out solos (a la Purple Haze) sound kind of unpleasant to me. Tone wise. Not playing wise.

I'm sort of like that too. But I like some of the heavier 80s sounds, like the dimed Marshall tone I guess. Or the EVH variac tone - "the brown sound". I generally don't like fuzz sounds when I'm playing, but a lot of times I like it when someone else is using one. I like a real smooth sounding distortion that still has a lot of dynamics and harmonics. I guess people would call that an "open sounding distortion".

Are you sure that you don't have the ground & "hot" wires reversed on your output jack? Your buzzing symptoms sound a lot like the same symptoms as people get when those two wires get crossed...

That's a little too many combinations to keep track of...

"Tone" is mostly in the hands. People waste soooooo much money chasing their tails with other things. It really is kind of sad, even comical. But companies selling their products to these tone chasers love it.

Yeah, ceramic caps do seem to be the worst types are far as holding tolerances go.

I have also noticed that pots can be all over the map, too.

i still dont like ceramic disc caps as a general rule, they seem to vary from the stated value a hell of a lot more than the others i tried.

It's because of the tolerances probably. Ceramics are usually +/- 20%.

Interesting. Yeah, I could see how it would work better with really bright sounding pickups.

Interesting idea. What kind of pickups are you using, and what value are the pots?

Wow, that totally sucks! I'll be on the lookout for fraudulent emails like that since I have my own website that I'm sure some schmuck on the other side of the globe would like to get.

My laptop is on a different extension lead, plugged into a different wall socket. when i turn on the laptop, the buzzing from my rig gets much louder. its very strange.

Your wall sockets will all be wired up to a common point though: Your main distribution board.

You should get the earth on your house checked. You probably have a high resistance between your earth wiring and actual ground.

Digital things, like laptops, are notorious for injecting all sorts of noise problems into power reticulation and when the earthing is not correct the noise doesn't get shunted to ground and causes all manner of noise issues.

Keith

+1

Nice presentation. That makes some whacky noises!

I have an old Jackson/Charvel bass that someone hacked some Jackson active pickups into. I always liked the sound of the bass, but it always had an annoying buzz when I turned the tone controls up all the way. After I did some recording the other day I thought that I should try completely shielding the control cavity with copper tape. Now the noise problem is completely gone!

Funny, twenty minutes of effort eradicated years of being annoyed and not understanding why it buzzed. I tried grounding the bridge, not grounding the bridge. Shielded the pickup cavities, everything but shielding the control cavity. I guess for some reason I was thinking that the active pickup circuitry itself would not pick up extraneous noise. Live and learn!

I had a bass that had a power switch on it instead of using the output jack to switch it. I hated it because I would forget to turn off the switch and then I'd have a dead battery the next day. I'd rather have to unplug the cord, less aggravating for me personally.

As for the 6l6 6p3s question, you can compare characteristics using the data sheets at frank.pocnet.net (my favorite tube resource). You will want to check the heaters (this is a common problem with Russian tubes, where they only accept parallel heaters and a lot of amps will use series) as well as plate resistances. As for the KT88's they are a lot more inefficient, much larger in size, and your power transformer may not be up to the extra load. I would suspect that a production amp would have a PT with only a small amount of leftover power, so putting something that is that much more hungry for power could cause a large draw that could potentially blow out the PT. Of course, you can take it to an amp tech to check out, but unless you are really unhappy with the sound of the amp, I would either go with real NOS 6l6's or just stick with what you've got.

Yeah, I agree.

Here's one using an Ikea shelf.

TDPRI

I saw a link to this at the http://www.diystompboxes.com forum. Another clever idea.

I'm getting an error message for your links Paul:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /DIYStompboxes/NewPedalBoard1.htm on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Not sure if the faults at your end or mine though..

You probably are in an IP address range I banned because of mega spam at my forum. You should be able to view those pages thru a proxy server. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Much much easier to make a pot smaller.

Here is two that I built:

http://www.diyguitarist.com/DIYStompboxes/NewPedalBoard.htm

http://www.diyguitarist.com/DIYStompboxes/NewPedalBoard1.htm

with the 50's whire if the pickup selector is in the middle, then either volume control will work as a master volume for the guitar. with modern wiring the volumes work each pickup indepentantly when the selector is in the middle. but a lot of people say that the guitars sound different idk i have never compared the two side by side on identical guitars.

Oh gee, that's all anyone had to say! If they do sound different, in my estimation, it's got to be because of the tone cap arrangement.

So the "volume" pot in "modern wiring" scheme is just a variable resistor instead of a real volume control? Sorry if it's a dumb question, I'm a Fender/Ibanez/Parker guy trying to learn about Gibson wiring...

A volume control is a variable resistor whatever guitar it is fitted in.

That wiring diagram looked like it didn't have the volume pots connected to ground, so in either case they should be connected to ground. A volume control to me is a voltage divider, not a variable resistor. If you took the ground connection off of the volume control, then it's a variable resistor.

Anyway, now I am confused as to what the heck the difference is between "50s wiring" and "modern wiring".

The main difference that I see between the 50s wiring and the "modern" wiring is where the tone control gets its signal from - it's either directly from the pickups before the volume control or on the output of the volume control. That would make a difference in how it works....

Hey! You're the guy from the Parker Forum. People worship you over there!

Yeah, that's me. You're funny, no one there worships me, lol.

The main difference that I see between the 50s wiring and the "modern" wiring is where the tone control gets its signal from - it's either directly from the pickups before the volume control or on the output of the volume control. That would make a difference in how it works....

That difference affects this aspect:

modern wiring gives less desirable volume vs tone interaction, something gibson must feel is worth sacrificing for independent volumes...

But isn't the reason for the independent volume issue which has nothing to do with the tone pots...

this refers to the volume pots only:

modern wiring doesn't vary the resistance between the voltage dividers (vol pot) output and earth, 50's wiring does.

If you draw up a wee circuit diagram (not a wiring diagram) of how modern and 50's wiring differ the functional differences will become clear.

So the "volume" pot in "modern wiring" scheme is just a variable resistor instead of a real volume control? Sorry if it's a dumb question, I'm a Fender/Ibanez/Parker guy trying to learn about Gibson wiring...

The main difference that I see between the 50s wiring and the "modern" wiring is where the tone control gets its signal from - it's either directly from the pickups before the volume control or on the output of the volume control. That would make a difference in how it works....

Ah. That is your problem. It is more than likely the power supply is not regulated. Most of the switchable 1.5 to 12 volt ones are simple designs with no rectification or smoothing at all. If you set it to 9 volts and without it being plugged into anything, check the voltage with a meter, I can pretty well guarantee the voltage will be up around 16 volts or even higher. If you check the output with a scope, you will see horrendous ripples and spikes. I would never use one of those types of power supply without putting a regulator circuit with smoothing capacitors between the supply and the equipment.

Yeah, if it does massive buzzing, then I agree, it's probably a non-regulated, or poorly regulated wall wart unit. If the noise is a high pitched whining, that often comes from one of those "switched" power supplies.

The other thing to keep in mind is if the wall wart is designed to put out 500mA at a range between 1.5 and 12 volts, and you set it at 9V but your current needed is only 10mA, it will put out quite a bit higher voltage than 9V because it's not loaded. It wouldn't surprise me if it was putting out 16V or more with no load on it.

Found the problem, it's the power supply unit, for some reason it causes interference with the pedal

Was it a "switching" type power supply? Those use an IC chip which can inject a whining noise into your audio system via the power supply.