Removed the tone knob, and back came the tone!

[flukather]

Fairly recently I added a tone knob to my EBMM Luke I guitar.

I did this ofcourse by adding a concentric pot ( no drilling holes for me ). A couple of days back I kind of regreted adding it and wanted to change back to just a single volume knob. When I heard from my tech guy that he had done the same for a friend of mine who has a LUKE II because he never used it. What the tech also noticed was that the guitar sounded so much better without a tone knob, fuller sound with more output.

I thought I had noticed a weaker sound since adding the tone knob, but I thought it was all in my head. But now I just had to try and see if I too could hear this difference. So I made some clips of all 3 pups on the guitar with the toneknob, and the removed it and did the same.

Holy Crap! It is true! The guitar sounds so much fuller and has more bite and output without the tone control. I don't know why but it does. Apperantly EMGs doesn't like tone controls, could be passive pups sound better without them too? Who knows!

All I know is that I'm never gonna add a tone control to any of my main axes again.

 

[NorM]

Live and learn!

I think it's great that you tried that. Even if you thought it's better the way it was the cahones to try that is just cool in my book.

 

[Tim O'Sullivan]

I never use tone controls. My ASS sounds much better since the removal of the tone pot.

 

[jazzbo jim]

Check out this

no load pot

 

[Tim O'Sullivan]

The other thing is that it just got in the way! My tech did a nice cover up job for me!

 

[flukather]

Cool with a no-load pot. Doesn't work for me though, I need a 25k concentric one.

 

[jazzbo jim]

Cool with a no-load pot. Doesn't work for me though, I need a 25k concentric one.

ooops.I forgot-EMG right?
Well, some folks mod their pots by disassembling the pot and scraping away a small section of the carbon trace at the end of the trace (effectively creating the "no-load point".

 

[Antoine]

I never use tone controls. My ASS sounds much better since the removal of the tone pot.

Tim O'Sullivan, can you describe the difference tonewise after the tone pot removal ?

 

[Tim O'Sullivan]

It just sounds a little brighter and more 'open'. Hard to describe really. The other thing on a practical level is that I always run the tone on 10, so I ended up knocking it all the time and making the sound even muddier and dull. So I suppose half sound, half practicality.

 

[beej]

Tim O'Sullivan, can you describe the difference tonewise after the tone pot removal ?

Removing one of the two pots increases the resistance seen by the pickups. (2 500k pots = 250k seen by the pickups.)

In general, the larger the pot values, the brighter your pickups will be - the resonant frequency peak will have shifted upward. Conversely, to darken the sound, decrease the value of your pots.

 

[Antoine]

Thanks Tim O'Sullivan and Beej... i'm really happy with the way my Axis SS sounds, so i will let it as it is ! (i never use the tone pot, always run it on 10 too)