Low Pass Filer Pedal vs. Passive Tone Control

[Mike in MI]

I mostly play active basses, and never seem to end up with one that has a preamp that includes a passive tone control. Rather than changing all of my basses, a more efficient solution would be to use a pedal for a similar effect. Does anyone have any experience using a low pass filter like the Broughton Audio Low Pass Filter, (or another pedal with a low pass filter) to simulate an on-board passive tone control? If so, how close is it to the real thing?

Also, any other suggestions/recommendations regarding this situation would be much appreciated.

 

[Passinwind]

I mostly play active basses, and never seem to end up with one that has a preamp that includes a passive tone control. Rather than changing all of my basses, a more efficient solution would be to use a pedal for a similar effect. Does anyone have any experience using a low pass filter like the Broughton Audio Low Pass Filter, (or another pedal with a low pass filter) to simulate an on-board passive tone control? If so, how close is it to the real thing?

Also, any other suggestions/recommendations regarding this situation would be much appreciated.
https://www.broughtonaudio.com/

I'm more partial to resonant LPFs than simple cut-only formats, but I've not heard Josh's implementation of that yet. It can be fairly close to the "real thing" if desired, but also go way beyond that in many useful ways, IME. Quite a few DIY'ers have built pedal versions of my open source filter preamp, you can sift through the long thread here for some ideas on that: The Passinwind Open Source Preamp

Another approach that can work very well is to use the Noll dual active/passive treble control pot as a retrofit with any number of commercial preamps that use a 50K linear pot for active treble. If your bass uses a stacked pot for Bass/Treble this won't work though.

 

[Mike in MI]

Thanks for the information. I wasn't aware of the Noll dual active/passive treble control pot. There's at least two basses I own now that use a 50K linear pot for active treble that I have considered adding passive tone to. This would be the perfect solution for that.

 

[Passinwind]

Thanks for the information. I wasn't aware of the Noll dual active/passive treble control pot. There's at least two basses I own now that use a 50K linear pot for active treble that I have considered adding passive tone to. This would be the perfect solution for that.

It works well even if you just leave the passive part in-circuit at all times, because it doesn't start cutting until you go left of the noon position, which is a pretty clever thing. So if you're actively boosting treble the passive section is always full open and essentially out of the way.