Master Tone - what makes it "master"?

cassius987 · #1 12-29-2010, 02:39 PM

Here is the 3 volume, 1 tone wiring of my (heavily modified) 4001FL. I love it. But the tone control only works on the neck pickup. Now ordinarily if I saw the wiring diagram below (that is my design), back in the day I would have said, "Well of course that's only going to affect the neck pickup." But other instruments--Rics and Gibsons specifically--that have two tone controls have shown me that in pickup blending mode, the tone controls both act as "master" (although the tone gets even darker if you have both of them rolled off). I figured the same thing would happen here, high frequency presumably traveling to ground through the mono jack--I realize that in the stereo jack the bridge pickup could not possibly see the tone control and I'm okay with that.

Evidently my hypothesis was wrong. What can I modify in my design that would make the tone control a true "master", affecting all three pickups in mono and at least the neck and mid in stereo?

**line6man** · #2 12-29-2010, 05:20 PM

The way you have it, the tone applies to the neck and middle pickups when the neck pickup's volume is all the way up.

If you want a proper master tone, run the tone parallel to the output, not one of the pickups.

cassius987 · #3 12-29-2010, 05:31 PM

So... off of the mono jack? Could I run it off of the mono jack and the T and R (but not S obviously) of the stereo jack, all in parallel?

walterw · #4 12-29-2010, 06:34 PM

i think you'd need a stacked tone pot to have it affect both stereo outs, otherwise it would short them together, creating a mono out out of both of them.

+1 to sending the tone to the hot of the jack to make it a master tone in mono, anyway.

cassius987 · #5 12-29-2010, 07:16 PM

Well the good thing about stereo out is that when I use that I am usually in a studio and don't use the tone control anyways, I like to just send a clean, wide-open signal on both sides. So perhaps just having a master tone in mono is alright.

If I ran it off of the mono jack from the side that is hooked up to the neck and mid pickups even when the switch is off (i.e. no plug in the mono jack) would that not also allow it to work for both of them in stereo, though?

SGD Lutherie · #6 12-29-2010, 07:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by walterw

i think you'd need a stacked tone pot to have it affect both stereo outs, otherwise it would short them together, creating a mono out out of both of them.

Yes. I had a master volume on my 4001 and used a dual ganged pot.

You can get Bourns pots with dual gangs that run in the same direction the same price as a regular one. A lot of their push pulls are like that.

By the time I added a third pickup I wasn't running it in stereo anymore.