Volume pot taper and treble bleed mod

[DrKev]

Michelle (my 2005LE SS) and I have been having a ball lately. She's just such an easy guitar to play, the body shape, how it hangs off the strap, the neck shape, the tones, serious good looks, it's just an amazing instrument. (Thank you, Slav!)

But I've been bothered by the volume pot taper - to my ears there was too much volume drop between 10 and 7. I really use my volume knob a lot so this was bothering me. I studied the wiring schematic over the weekend (Thanks A.J.!) and compared it to the guitar - all fine there. After today's rehearsal I decided I'd have to de something about this so I swapped out the volume pot this evening, hoping that might fix it, and got - exactly the same thing.

Turns out I forgot about the treble bleed mod on my old strat. For years and years it's just been there as a necessity. I totally forgot how much it changes the taper. Three minutes, one 0.002µF capacitor + one 100k resistor in parallel later and I'm much happier! I can do my volume swells where I like them (in the early part of the turn), I have finer control over the volume in the top half, and it never gets muddy when I turn it down. Awesome!

Funny what you get used to. I imagine it would never have bothered most of you at all but I'd thought I'd post the story in case it's of any use to anyone in the future.

And the original stock pot is going back in tomorrow. Aside from nothing being wrong with it, it's fantastic quality.

 

[Ming]

Hi Dr Kev,
That's very interesting, I've finally gone "old school" and ditched most of my pedals and started cleaning up with the volume control.... the so called dark art!
Like you, I find the volume drop of on my Super Sports a bit too drastic.... where exactly do you fit the cap & resistor?

 

[Roubster]

I took out the treble bleed mod out of my Silo Special. The thing is I really liked it specifically for the neck pickup, but it really thined out the bridge pickup which I could not stand. I also did not get along with the resistor and cap in parallel due to its effect on the taper of the pot. The one I did like was the resistor and cap in series, but ultimately decided to ditch it because I NEED a FAT bridge tone at all times hehe.

Ming, the treble bleed mod goes between the center lug and the left lug on the volume pot.

 

[DrKev]

See? Not everyone likes it!

What I've done follows the Seymour Duncan recommendation (you'll find the wiring diagram on their website). It's not perfect (none of them are) but just to point out that none of them have any effect on your tone when the volume control is on 10. When you turn down to 3, there is a little less bass coming through but I'm OK with that (and without it it would be very muddy sounding).

There are lots of variations on this (different values of resistors and capacitors, series and parallel) and what not but they all go across the same two lugs of the volume pot. The general consensus is that the parallel combination has a greater effect on the taper, which is what works for me.

EDIT (an hour later): I've just tried the same two values in SERIES. As a treble bleed mod, it works just as well as the parallel version, but the affect on the taper is less dramatic than the parallel mode. Instead of a dramatic drop from 10 - 7 (which there was stock) there is a gentle decrease from 10-8 followed by a quicker drop off to zero from there. A lot of people would LOVE this one but I'll stay with the parallel mode for now. I feel like I have more usable volume through a larger part of the range of the control.

 

[straycat113]

I can understand this being an annoyance Kev as I am one who like to fiddle with both volume and tone knobs, and over the years I had some guitars that would go from three to wide open. Back in the day my main Tele used to do it which drove me crazy, and some friends thought I was just nit picking. Then again they would have everything wide open and half I doubt ever even touched there tone knob.