ShortScale.org

I have a CIJ JM with Antiquity II's, a 250K tone pot and a 0.33 orange drop capacitor (or whatever usual capacitor value is with two 3's in the name) fitted. I find that compared to my other JM, fitted with Antiquity humbuckers, it's really really bright, probably due to the types of pickups. I play my regular JM with the tone on 3 and I wanted to know of any suggestions of how I could reduce the trebliness of it to better match to my humbuckered JM without having to use a seperate EQ pedal. I realise that a change of pickups will probably be the best solution but I haven't got the cash for this at the moment.

I think humbuckers would help somewhat but really a lot of the treble is due to the bridge design in that it doesn't really let the strings resonate through the wood (it floats on two teeny screws, no through body stringing), and given that the bridge also has very little weight and mass doesn't help either. I don't think you can really escape that feature of the guitar with pickups.

However, that 0.033 cap is still quite a low value for a Fender single coil guitar so you could try a 0.047, or even a 0.1 for less high end. A lot less expensive a mod!

EDIT: Sorry, countless edits there - bored in the office and not feeling very articulate.

Thanks George. The guitar isn't too trebly when used on it's own, just as compared to my other guitar. I don't really want to be messing about with tone controls on my amp or pedals for each guitar when i'm playing gigs and I like the sound of the single coils for some songs and humbuckers for others. If I can knock the treble down a bit to make it sound a bit darker that would be good, but I don't want to take too much off to make it too dull or muddy and I would still like to have some trebly bite to the sound. I'll give your suggestion of changing the cap a go and see what happens.

I noticed a real difference between those two guitars at the shortscale gig, didn't think the sunburst one sounded crappy or anything but the humbuckered one was lovely.

I played the whole first song on my sunburst JM with the rhythm circuit on, I couldn't really hear what I was playing so didn't notice - although I did think it sounded a bit odd.

Can anyone explain to me what the purpose of the capacitor that is attached to the tone control on a JM is? Is it just to reduce treble from the output?

Is the value something like 0.01? If so I think they're installed on guitars with 500K/1Meg pots to help the treble from rolling off as quickly when you turn the volume down. A "treble bleed" as it were. If you get rid of it the treble roll-off might work out in your favour by turning the volume down a touch. It may also help with overall tone but I'm not such an expert on these things.

EDIT: I meant volume pot, not tone.

<-------- Idiot

Colour me stupid. If you're talking the actual orange drop you have, yeah it's to stop treble. The higher the value the more resistance, so the more treble is taken out.

Call me crazy, but how about using that tone knob? Eh?

GeorgeF wrote:Colour me stupid. If you're talking the actual orange drop you have, yeah it's to stop treble. The higher the value the more resistance, so the more treble is taken out.

Yeah, it was general question George - and you've answered it, thanks.

And in reply to Haze, I think I answered this in my first post when I said 'I play my regular JM with the tone on 3'.

Have you tried it on 2?
Maybe source some lower value pots to try put in the tone circuit and a larger valued cap

GeorgeF wrote:The higher the value the more resistance

Um, no. The higher the value, the lower the impedance at a given frequency. The higher the frequency, the lower the impedance at a given value of capacitance.

Whoops, my bad. Well, higher value cap = less treble at the end of the day.

Haze wrote:Have you tried it on 2?
Maybe source some lower value pots to try put in the tone circuit and a larger valued cap

Fuckin' 'ell, Slowpoke! Have you been following this thread?


Another way of lowering the treble without spending money is to play with a thick matt finish plectrum. It sounds silly but gloss plectrums add a lot more high end to your playing, getting shriller the thinner it gets. Something like Tortex or most certainly Ultex Jazz III's would help a lot in thickening the tone.

Haze wrote:Maybe source some lower value pots to try put in the tone circuit and a larger valued cap

Again, I think I covered this in my first post when I said 'I have a CIJ JM with Antiquity II's, a 250K tone pot'. Do they make pots with a lower value than 250K?

George - Interesting suggestion about plectrums, maybe i'll give it a try - although it will be difficult to wean myself off the 0.73 Jim Dunlop USA Nylon picks i've used since I started playing all thos years ago.

Put a 250k Volume pot in it, it will be day and night difference.
It will still sound like it has single coils, that's unavoidable unless you swap to humbuckers. But it wont be bright at all.
Its got nothing to do with the tone pot or capacitor value (unless you are using this all the time), its all about the volume pot dude!And believe me, once you swap to a 250k volume pot you wont even think about a lower value pot than that because it would become really dark.

JM and Jags use 1 meg pots in the main circuit, this is the one and only thing that makes them bright and trebley.

Earth wrote:Put a 250k Volume pot in it, it will be day and night difference.

Oh shit. This. I thought I read that you changed volume and tone? It's actually the volume you need to change to get the real discernible difference. I made the same mistake with my Jag.

Could I just swap the 2 pots over or are they different types of pots?

Yeah will be fine. If they're linear or audio might make a difference for roll-off but at 10 will not matter. Not sure how the 250k vol and 1meg tone will sound but again, don't think it matters at 10.

I have a B500K pot at home, I might give that a try before I go all the way down to 250K.

Use the rhythm circuit