Too much treble in pickup

[Darren Galloway]

Hi all, I have just put a new Dimarzio Super Distortion in a strat style guitar and find it a bit bitey on treble. If I replace the 500k volume pot with a 250k pot will that curb the treble on the pickup? I don't need a lot removed but just a bit. Kind of like rolling back the tone knob a notch. Thanks.

[David King]

Darren,
That should help but the guitar guys here will have a better sense of how much of a change you can expect.

[Darren Galloway]

Darren,
That should help but the guitar guys here will have a better sense of how much of a change you can expect.

Thanks for the reply, David.

[Barry Daniels]

This makes me think of the recent Stew-Mac Trade Secret mod. I am not sure it would help with this problem. Perhaps one of the electric gurus could weigh in.

http://www.stewmac.com/tsarchive/ts0182 ... ign=ts0182

[Mark Swanson]

I was going to suggest a capacitor/resistor network before I even saw that video today! It's just the way to go. the key to this whole thing is learning to change the values of the cap and resistor, in order to "tune" the pickups' response to be just what you like. go ahead and try the values shown, and then experiment with different values if you want.
My electronic genius friend explained to me once how to figure this "tuning" process, but I didn't retain it and can't relate it to you now...shame on me....more or less cap will provide more or less cut, and the resistor will determine the cutoff frequency.

[Darren Galloway]

I was going to suggest a capacitor/resistor network before I even saw that video today! It's just the way to go. the key to this whole thing is learning to change the values of the cap and resistor, in order to "tune" the pickups' response to be just what you like. go ahead and try the values shown, and then experiment with different values if you want.
My electronic genius friend explained to me once how to figure this "tuning" process, but I didn't retain it and can't relate it to you now...shame on me....more or less cap will provide more or less cut, and the resistor will determine the cutoff frequency.

Yes shame on you. I never can remember that kind of stuff.

Thanks for the great video! I'm going to give this a try. I'll post how it works out.

Thanks for the replies.

[Greg Robinson]

The mod shown in that Trade Secrets video will not only affect the tone, but also the taper of the pot. It will actually make a linear taper pot approximate an audio taper, but doesn't skew an audio taper pot so much as to be unusable usually, although it might behave a little strangely.
Really, it's just the usual treble bleed capacitor and a fake "audio-taper" resistor. Both the resistor and capacitor are effectively out of circuit when turned up to max.

Darren, if your pickups are too bright, this won't help at full volume, which is where most people set their volume pot.
I would strap a 1nF (0.001uF) capacitor on the volume pot from where the pickup connects (usually pin 1/the leftmost pin when looking at the pot from behind with the pins at the top on Strat style wiring) to any convenient ground point. Tweak the capacitor value higher for more treble cut, smaller for less treble cut. This will have a more pronounced effect than changing from 500k to 250k pots.

[Darren Galloway]

Ahh... that makes perfect sense Greg. Thanks, I'll give it a go tonight.

[Darren Galloway]

The mod shown in that Trade Secrets video will not only affect the tone, but also the taper of the pot. It will actually make a linear taper pot approximate an audio taper, but doesn't skew an audio taper pot so much as to be unusable usually, although it might behave a little strangely.
Really, it's just the usual treble bleed capacitor and a fake "audio-taper" resistor. Both the resistor and capacitor are effectively out of circuit when turned up to max.

Darren, if your pickups are too bright, this won't help at full volume, which is where most people set their volume pot.
I would strap a 1nF (0.001uF) capacitor on the volume pot from where the pickup connects (usually pin 1/the leftmost pin when looking at the pot from behind with the pins at the top on Strat style wiring) to any convenient ground point. Tweak the capacitor value higher for more treble cut, smaller for less treble cut. This will have a more pronounced effect than changing from 500k to 250k pots.

Greg, I moved to a 250k pot and used the .0001uF cap on it and it is perfect. Thanks for the suggestion on it. It also made my single coil neck sound much better.

[Greg Robinson]

Glad it worked for you Darren!