Treble bleed circuits

Cadorman

Cadorman

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I hadn't played around with treble bleeds on my guitars until I just put together my Warmoth bass. I put bleeds on both volume controls and I have to say I am quite impressed with how the tone holds as the volume is turned down. I am thinking about adding these to my Les Paul's now. Anyone done this? Or shall I be the pig in Guinea?
 
Cadorman said:
I hadn't played around with treble bleeds on my guitars until I just put together my Warmoth bass. I put bleeds on both volume controls and I have to say I am quite impressed with how the tone holds as the volume is turned down. I am thinking about adding these to my Les Paul's now. Anyone done this? Or shall I be the pig in Guinea?
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This is what a low impedance volume pedal does in the FX loop of a tube amp....
 
Don't have treble bleeds in any of my Les Pauls. Or the other Gibsons, now that I think about it. Over the years I've become used to a little treble rolloff, though I do think the ones with 50s wiring might roll off a bit more cleanly than the others.

All but one of my PRSs have treble bleeds though, and I love the way they stay bright. Gives you a crisper cleanup, no question. The one without has 57/08 PAFs and a decidedly vintage character & cleanup. Sepiatone magic, very three-dimensional. I have no desire to modernize that, as much as I love the others.
 
Did both the 50s wiring and treble bleed goodies on my G400. Bit later added 57s pups. I can say the wiring mods made a bigger difference than did the pups. I tend to play at lower volumes on the guitar than a lot of you do. So keeping some treble at lower volume setting works for me. In hindsight, if I had it to do over..... May not have changed the pickups.
 
I think my '62 Reissue Strat has a treble bleed circuit in it. I added it when I switched to RS pots and caps. It sounds good. Haven't looked inside of it in over ten years because everything works.
 
I've used treble bleeds in the past, but it's been so long I kind of forgot about them for guitar usage. Maybe I'll make a couple up for the sandwich SG.
 
Made this today for a guy's Stratocaster. Its a funky hybrid of sorts. A .022uf tone capacitor with a 220k resistor.

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I've tried treble bleeds and '50s wiring a few times over the years. Hate em. Probably because I always had guitars with "modern" wiring when I was learning my chops, which seems a silly thing to say because they have used it far, far longer than they used the '50s style. I suppose the reason is that most people play most of the time with the volumes wide open or close to it. I don't - I ride the volumes a lot - but I have come to expect that high-end attenuation and when it's not there the guitar seems far too bright and shrill to me.
 
gball said:
I've tried treble bleeds and '50s wiring a few times over the years. Hate em. Probably because I always had guitars with "modern" wiring when I was learning my chops, which seems a silly thing to say because they have used it far, far longer than they used the '50s style. I suppose the reason is that most people play most of the time with the volumes wide open or close to it. I don't - I ride the volumes a lot - but I have come to expect that high-end attenuation and when it's not there the guitar seems far too bright and shrill to me.
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I also use resistors often to "brighten" or "darken" certain pickups. It's been done a long time. I have some sketches Bill Lawrence sent to me years ago documenting the procedures.
 
Robert Herndon said:
I also use resistors often to "brighten" or "darken" certain pickups. It's been done a long time. I have some sketches Bill Lawrence sent to me years ago documenting the procedures.
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Yeah, people bitch and moan about the 300k and 150k pots in Norlin-era Gibsons. But if you've ever dropped a 500k pot into one of those guitars that has a later T-Top (the ones with the ceramic magnets) you'll know instantly why they did it: Total icepick through a non-master-volume amp.
Seriously, its not like they were saving money by using the lower value - it was done purposely because those pickups were too bright through the predominant amps of the time.
 
I’ve said before. I like my music loud and gritty. But when I play…. I play primarily pretty clean. Like 3-5 clean on the volume. I did the treble bleed thingy on my G400 and could clearly hear a difference from before to after. Now. For whatever reason both my Strat and Viking sound just as nice at 3 as they do at 10.
 
iblive said:
I’ve said before. I like my music loud and gritty. But when I play…. I play primarily pretty clean. Like 3-5 clean on the volume. I did the treble bleed thingy on my G400 and could clearly hear a difference from before to after. Now. For whatever reason both my Strat and Viking sound just as nice at 3 as they do at 10.
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During a high-energy, live performance, any perception of subtleties is largely imagination and successful music industry marketing at work, but, I have found some really great uses for treble bleed circuits in the recording studio. Sitting there with phones on, you can really pick out the subtleties.

What I like about the treble bleeds - especially those using resistors both in series and in parallel, is they bring a real clarity to those passages where you have the guitar volume turned down.

Fender Parrish-Style twin Resistor Bleed.jpg

Personally, I would have never developed a true appreciation for this had I not found myself playing on so many people's recordings for hire across multiple genre's of music.

My biggest pet peeve on guitars is that beyond a certain point, the tone circuit just creates a muffled mess from a tonal perspective. Switching to 0.01uf was a step in the right direction and I mod all of my guitars with this value, the noted exception being the 21 Tone Jimmy Page harness in my Les Paul Replica, which uses both 0.15uf and a 0.18uf tone capacitors.

I'm currently experimenting with dropping the Gibson circuit values down from 0.22uf to about 0.12uf in order to retain a little more low frequency response when using the tone control, and yet avoiding that muffled effect.
 
Cadorman said:
I hadn't played around with treble bleeds on my guitars until I just put together my Warmoth bass. I put bleeds on both volume controls and I have to say I am quite impressed with how the tone holds as the volume is turned down. I am thinking about adding these to my Les Paul's now. Anyone done this? Or shall I be the pig in Guinea?
Click to expand...
I added one to the neck pickup volume control on my Burny SG. Pretty happy with it.
 
Robert Herndon said:
I'm currently experimenting with dropping the Gibson circuit values down from 0.22uf to about 0.12uf in order to retain a little more low frequency response when using the tone control, and yet avoiding that muffled effect.
Click to expand...

I think you mean .022 uF and .012 uF capacitors! :D Capacitors rated at .22 and .12 would be VERY dark!

Anyhoo...

I've played around a bit with the .015 uF capacitors and have generally been pretty pleased.
 
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