Not really a making or modding question but this seems like the best place. I'm thinking of things like the Neutrik Timbre plug. Anyone using these?
I have a Kingtone switch in one of my strats which also works by adding capacitance and I really like the effect ... it's different to what you can achieve just by fiddling with tone controls although I wouldn't have a clue as to why. Anyway, it would be nice to be able to do a similar thing to guitars that don't have a Kingtone seeing as they're £100 a pop.
Anyone got any real-world experience or recommendations?
Comments
You could put the internal guitar stuff into a stomp box case maybe
Often when I'm coming up with mods I build them into the jack plug rather than keep taking the guitar apart. I've done kill switches, light dependant tone controls and pre amps in this fashion.
Basically a lowpass filter is a resistance in series with the signal followed by a capacitance connected from signal to ground. So you can easily fit this within a typical jack plug. To work out the values use one of the mainly RC low pass calculators online.
I usually set it to about 30ft and it just gives a harshness reducing treble roll off that I really like.
I’m so bored I might as well be listening to Pink Floyd
But I always thing the sound people chase is a sum of the parts. Some older Marshall's are insanely bright to my ears, even with the treble rolled off so a tone sucking 25 foot cable was probably a good idea for Hendrix.
I can actually tell you what happens when you put a Les Paul through 50 odd foot of cable. Because an engineer in the studio misheard my instructions when I said someone wanted to record their part in the control room and to use the passthroughs to the live room to his cab.
He should have put the head in the control room and used the speakon passthroughs to power the cab which was in the live room. Instead he patched the guitar signal into the main patchbay in the control room which then went 50 odd feet around the live room before coming out and reaching the head which was on top of the cab. The guitarist who was a good friend showed me there was no difference at all between the bridge and neck pickups. Neither had any top end at all with the cable acting as a huge RC filter.
Just to see what would happen with my EMG 81 / 89 guitar I repeated the same mistake and this time there was no treble loss at all.
The reason why it's different from the normal tone control is because firstly the value is much smaller - typically in the 100pF to 1000pF range depending on cable length and quality - and secondly it's effectively turned all the way down all the time. What changing the 'length' of the simulated cable does is change the value of the capacitance, rather than adding a resistance in series with it like a tone control does.
Hendrix typically used four "10ft" curly cables in his stage rig - the three pedals were linked together with them as well. Bearing in mind that a "10ft" curly cable is actually about 30' long when pulled out straight, that's roughly 120' of cable! And all in series with the guitar when the pedals are off (even discounting the tone suck from the two non-true-bypass ones - only the Fuzz Face is true bypass, and that only because it bleeds fuzz into the bypass otherwise). No wonder that Marshall kept making their amps brighter and brighter from the 60s to the mid-70s...
Use the 'Hendrix set-up' today with short modern low-capacitance cables and it will probably literally make your ears bleed.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
This isn't really about cables for me, it's about achieving that sort of effect. Maybe sticking the Kingtone switch into a box as per @Stratovarious suggestion would be just the ticket!
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein