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Electronics Query

J Posega

J Posega

Cat Dad and Dingwall Enthusiast
Inactive
Suspended
Jul 16, 2005
11,796
17,172
38
Portland, OR
#1
I just got an Armen fretless bass with a J/HB setup. It has 3 knobs and a 5-way switch. Here's a pic of the control cavity.

IMG_1630.jpg


Knob number 1 on the left is volume... the other two almost act as passive bass and trebles knobs, sorta.

Switch goes from neck pickup, to neck+bridge series?, neck+bridge parallel?, bridge coils series?, bridge coils parallel? Again, not entirely sure. There's also this weird doohicky attached to the switch.

IMG_1632.jpg


Any help?
 
#3
What's the inductor do in a tone circuit like this? I'm starting to get a feeling that one of the knobs is like a tone shaping thing... mid-range sweep or something like that.

Any idea how to tell how all those caps and the inductor function together from the pic? I can make the bass sound good, but I'm thinking of ditching this setup for VTT or VVT and 5 way selector.
 
#5
TheEmptyCell said:
What's the inductor do in a tone circuit like this? I'm starting to get a feeling that one of the knobs is like a tone shaping thing... mid-range sweep or something like that.

Any idea how to tell how all those caps and the inductor function together from the pic? I can make the bass sound good, but I'm thinking of ditching this setup for VTT or VVT and 5 way selector.
Click to expand...

Inductors can be used for mid-cuts.
 
#6
since you have 3 pickup coils it might be wired similar to a Strat. so any combination of coils would be in parallel mode. that's interesting how the inductor and cap are wired to the switch. the middle pot might be adjustment for what mids get cut by the inductor. I also noticed the resistor between the volume and middle pot. I wonder what are the values of those caps and resistor.
 
#7
LowerBeef said:
The inductor could be used like the opposite of a tone cap, instead of rolling off highs, it would roll off bass.
Click to expand...

With proper circuit design, an ideal inductor can be used to do the same thing as a cap in a filter circuit. Inductors perform less close to ideal than caps and caps are cheaper so the preference in most signal conditioning and low level amplification applications is for capacitors. In the preamp designs I've seen, they are usually used to shape the mid-freq circuit control. The Bart NTMB has an inductor in it for this purpose. They also make good noise filters.
 
#10
I got it 3rd or 4th hand used, and feel like rewiring it VVT with the 5 way for different combinations would be more useful for myself. It's certainly a cool circuit with some great sounds, but I just prefer something a bit different.

Worse come to worse, I take this harness out, try it my way and if I don't like it, put it back.
 

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