Reflex question: What's up with the tone knob when pickups are in parallel?

[klaveguitars]

I recently got a PDN Reflex. When I set the switch to "parallel" and roll down the tone knob, I get this crazy amazing cocked-wah, Michael Schenker-esque sound, It sounds like a bump in the eq around 1k. I never saw this feature mentioned anywhere, what is it?

When using the pickups in series, the tone knob just rolls off highs...

 

[jptortor]

It's just a cool side effect of the coils wired in parallel. It's the same if you have a strat and put it in a notch position and roll the tone down. Very cool extra sound!

 

[uOpt]

That is always the case. Rolling down the tone pot *all* the way turn it into a load capacitor instead of a treble control. A load capacitor that is too big to be useful for normal pickups. However, a humbucker in parallel has a way too high resonance frequency, and now the fat load capacitor brings it to useful levels.

You can get a similar effect from regular setups by using a smaller load capacitor.

 

[ozzyrules]

Watch this video. Around 1:55 he talks about this:

 

[klaveguitars]

Awesome! Thanks for the info. One of my favorite features of the Reflex, for sure!

 

[Benji Peterson]

Man that is a nasty feature! Love it.

 

[edhalen]

All hail the Reflex!!!! \m/ \m/