Volume reuctionStrat loses sparkle question

paulnb57

The white Strat I finished recently is now my favourite, but when on anything other than full volume the topend sparkle disappears, and it goes a bit muddy, is there anything I can do?

250k CTS pots

3x Single coils

.047 cap

GuitarMonkey

Play on 10 all the time.

or

Fit a treble pass circuit to the volume control.

I'd go for option #1 myself

paulnb57

Thanks @GuitarMonkey is the treble pass mod straightforward? I'm a bit clueless with electrickery, I'd best Google!.....

GuitarMonkey

There was discussion of treble pass (aka treble bleed) circuits on here recently.

ICBM

The other thing you can do is use a much shorter or lower-capacitance guitar cable, since that's what actually causes the treble loss.

Some are *much* worse than others - coiled ones in particular, but also plenty of straight ones, some by apparently respected brands. Anything over 10' will cause some loss, anything over 20' serious loss, even with a good cable. (Any coiled cable is likely to be at least 30' long, if you measure the full length along the wire.)

If you want to fit a treble-pass cap it's really simple, just a small cap connected to the two non-grounded terminals on the volume pot. Some people like a resistor in series or parallel with it to moderate the effect. There is no universally 'right' value unfortunately, you may have to experiment with what sounds best for you and your cables.

paulnb57

GuitarMonkey said:

There was discussion of treble pass (aka treble bleed) circuits on here recently.

Am I the only person to find the search facility on here to be utterly useless?

Anyroadup any ideas on values of caps and resistors as a general starting point?....

steamabacus

With a Strat, I've found it easiest to first solder on two short thin wires to the two tags on the volume pot which you can then run out from under the scratchplate and re-assemble/restring the guitar. You can then experiment with various values of capacitor / resistor by attaching them with crocodile clips to the exposed wires. When you've worked out what values work best, slacken the strings, disassemble and solder the cap/resistor to the volume pot.

I use a 0.001uF cap. With humbuckers, I tend to use a parallel resistor around 300k Ohms but not usually with single coils. It is very much 'suck it and see' though as it depends on pickup, pot and what response you actually want from the volume control.

Megii

This thread on the Guitar Nuts 2 forum might be of interest:

http://guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/5317/treble-bleed-circuit

Somewhere in the thread it's suggested that a 0.001uF (1000pF) cap in parallel with a 120 to 150K resistor works well for a strat. I've used those values myself and been happy. Using the parallel resistor with the cap does also modify the pot taper somewhat, but with a log taper pot, I find I like the result - it softens the pot taper so that the volume doesn't drop off quite so quickly as you turn down, but still a bit faster than with a linear pot.

paulnb57

Thanks chaps, I'll source parts...