Get Better Tone Controls In Your Gibson Guitar With This Easy Modification!
In this video I’m going to show you an easy way to get the best out of your guitar’s tone controls. A common issue that guitarists especially with a Gibson find, is usually a too overwhelming high frequency roll-off of the Tone Knob. In the practical guitar world the HF filtering doesn’t musically match with the way a balanced tone gets dialed in, right?
The Problem
By design the high frequency filtering can create a sound that has too much HF roll-off. Especially the fully rolled-off setting gives loss of transients and definition. In the time that the circuit was designed and the values of the pots and tone capacitors where chosen, guitar-sounds where made differently. But in the practical electrical guitar world in ROCK AND ROLL, and the way a desirable guitar tone gets dialed in the tone control doesn’t get the attention and use it deserves.
The Solution - Half!
By lowering, and in this case going half the value on the tone capacitor, we get a much more interesting and effective tone control. It also introduces a great and interesting voice, kind of raw and rock and roll!
Half the value gives great results and doesn’t sound like any compromise! So in a Gibson, a vintage stock value is 0,022uf. So we go with 0,01uF, easy! Sometimes there’s a 0,047uF. It works of course, but makes the tone control roll-off even more in a stock configuration.
Anyway, after the modification, we still are able to get beautiful and sweet rolled-off tones, but with our transients are still coming through, providing us the definition and musical response we need!
Single Coils
With these corrected values in the filtering we get interesting sounds with healthy transients and upper-midrange harmonics. Half the value for Gibsons does the trick, with single-coils you may go even lower. I’ve went to 5000pf (10%) but you may want to moderate and experiment.
Conclusion
With these corrected values in the filtering we get interesting sounds with healthy transients and upper-midrange harmonics. If we listen to certain vintage rock and roll recordings, I wonder if they did this as well…
I think so, please Enjoy!
OMG!!! What a sound changing whit that 0,01 nf capacitor on the tone control!!! Amazing good sound!! Thanks brother!!
Ciao Janos, that’s great man, thanks!