TBX

Axe_meister

Just removed  the TBX control on my US standard strat and boy it really opens up the guitar it sounds proper stratty now.

Megii

I tried fitting one to my tele (partscaster) once, and the result was mud - apparently there are things you can do with the cap and resister values on the control to improve matters, but I just swapped for a standard tone setup, and suddenly the tele sounded lovely and crisp. Won't be bothering with any TBX tone controls in the future.

ICBM

Stands for Total BolloX.

Fender said "Treble and Bass eXpander", but they don't boost treble and bass at all - what they do is artificially strangle the tone over the lower half of the range, then progressively remove the strangle as you turn it up full to make you *think* it's opening up the tone, but in a way that somehow doesn't pass through 'good'.

They were designed for active guitars, where they actually work well. Why Fender decided to apply them to passive ones, I have no idea…

You can fix the problem very simply by removing the 82K 'strangle' resistor, which gives a normal tone control (albeit with the wrong cap value for a true vintage sound) from the detent down to zero, and a near no-load setting with it at 10. But a standard 250K pot with a .047 or .1 cap still sounds better and has a more natural sweep, to me.