guitar volume, bypassing cap

[El_Martin]

Hi everybody!

Since my TeleWreck (Liverpool 15 W) is running fine and quite stable, I am about to fine-tune it.

Tried it with several guitars, fiddled a lot w. settings...still not used to Trainwrecks.

It cleans up well w. rolled back guitar volume. Strat w/o volume bypassing cap works fine. Les Paul special copy w. (guess) 1nF bypassing cap over 1 MOhm volpot is kinda nasty/trebly.

What are the preferred pots and bypassing caps (if any) in yor guitars when playing TW amps?

Ciao
Martin

[gearhead]

Do you mean a treble bleed cap?

http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/potm.htm

[El_Martin]

YESSSSIR!

that is: cap connecting input and middle lug of a volume pot.
Gives a paralle path for the highs to bypass the pot.

Ciao
Martin

[skeezbo]

The treble bleed cap seemed to work too well on the Gibsons I tried it on. They wound up a little shrill. I like it on Fenders, but I use a resistor in parallel: My Teles have a 500p ceramic cap with a 150K resistor. Try a smaller cap and/or a resistor 1/2 to 2/3 the value of your volume control with the .001. You will have to tweak it to got the right amount of highs at the right level for your playing style.
Good luck!
Lou

[LeftyStrat]

One of the best things I ever did was temporarily hardwire my guitar straight, i.e. pickup selector switch directly to output jack, no tone or volume control, and then run a jack from my guitar to a breadboard. Then you can experiment with different tone caps, bleeder caps, and different volume pots.

Varying the value of the volume pot is quite an interesting exercise. Higher values make your guitar brighter, but also tend to dull more as they are turned down. There is a lot of variance in the values of pots, so you can fine tune your guitar by measuring a bunch and finding the value that works best.

Ken Fischer wrote a couple of articles about guitar controls and caps:

http://www.ultimateguitargear.com/ken_f ... ter2_1.htm
http://www.ultimateguitargear.com/ken_f ... ter2_2.htm

[El_Martin]

Hi!

Nice link, Lefty, TNX.
(Glad you didn't leave the board

Ciao
Martin

[geetarpicker]

I don't run treble bleed caps in any of my guitars with my original Express. However my Les Pauls have pots that measure in the 500-600k range and my strats with Fralins have 250k pots. I think if you find the right pot value for a particular pickup combination you won't need any cap tricks to make it all work just fine.

[El_Martin]

TNX, Glen!

I didn't dare to ask you directly, how you get THAT sound
OK, most is due to your fingers and playing

The lil Liverpool just produced too much brightness w. my LP copy and
treble bleed caps.

Gotta check with some of my other guitars.

Ciao
Martin

[paulster]

The lil Liverpool just produced too much brightness w. my LP copy and treble bleed caps.

Have you tried Glen's long lead trick to get some capacitance in the cable shunting some of the highs to ground? I think, from memory, that Glen often uses 2x 20' cables hooked together with a 1/4" joiner to get a 40' cable.

[El_Martin]

Hi paulster!

TNX for your input.
It's only too trebly when guitar volume is way down and bleed capacitor takes over

There must be some hi capacitance collied cord guitar cable floating around my house. Gonna try it.

Ciao
Martin

[paulster]

I meant ditch the treble bleed cap and try the long cable trick!

Or use a resistor in series with the bleed cap to limit its effect.

[geetarpicker]

Yep the cord makes a TON of difference to me. I recently measured the cord I used on most of my CD and it has freakin' 3500pf of capacitance. Heck with modern Mogami cable it would take 100' to get that kind of loading. I don't use that cord much anymore, but most of the time I run x2 20' Mogamis which measure about 700pf each, so that would be 1400pf. Lately I made a little 6" long 1/4 male to 1/4 female adapter that I can hook onto the end of the cord with a 2500pf cap inside. That with a single 20' Mogami sounds nice for a total load of over 3000pf. Sorry the long detail on this, but it makes a big difference and allows you to actually use the bright switch. I like the capacitance loading combined with the bright switch in the 500pf position, which to me works better than a low capacitance cable and no bright switch. Once you get the loading right the bright switch helps give you come clarity when you back off the guitar for clean, but when the amp is pushed the OT tends to round it all back off nicely.

[LOUDthud]

I made a stomp box once that had a cute little circuit that effectively made a variable capacitance load for a guitar. Basically it was just a source follower fed from a 1meg volume pot with a 4700pf cap feeding back to the top of the pot. Then another source follower fed that signal to a 50K volume pot. When you twist the cap pot, it sounds almost like a wah-wah when the guitar is all the way up.

[El_Martin]

TNX again, Glen!
TNX Loudthud!

These are the details and ideas I am after.
Got a twelve position switch w. different caps connected.

First I found the bright switch kinda obsolete...

Getting slowly used to the TW thing.

Ciao
Martin

[gearhead]

Lately I made a little 6" long 1/4 male to 1/4 female adapter that I can hook onto the end of the cord with a 2500pf cap inside. That with a single 20' Mogami sounds nice for a total load of over 3000pf.

When you mentioned the two 20' cords in a previous post, had me thinking along those lines. Electrically, how is it hooked up inside the adapter?