Varitone vs Tone Knob - Opinions

[Mike in MI]

Unless the Birdsong varitone is somehow encased it would be pretty easy to turn one of the positions into a “tone bypass” position by either temporarily lifting one of the capacitor legs for testing or permanently removing one of the capacitors if you like that tone. You could also wire in a switch to bypass the entire varitone very easily (maybe a push-pull pot for the volume control if you don’t want to drill a new hole)

These are all excellent suggestions. I stopped being lazy and opened up the bass and had a look at the varitone. I see 5 capacitors on it so I assume there is a 6th, non capacitor clean setting. I guess i need to slap on a set of fresh round wounds so I can get a feel for the pickups and tone of this thing.

Here it is in all of its glory. I guess you could say it’s encased in something - fancy black electrical tape! So you can see the 5 capacitors. Interestingly at the very right it looks like this is wired to a conductor (that’s what it looks like to me anyway please correct me if I’m wrong) which would make it a true varitone as SulzerType2 pointed out above.

 

[sunbeast]

These are all excellent suggestions. I stopped being lazy and opened up the bass and had a look at the varitone. I see 5 capacitors on it so I assume there is a 6th, non capacitor clean setting. I guess i need to slap on a set of fresh round wounds so I can get a feel for the pickups and tone of this thing.
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Here it is in all of its glory. I guess you could say it’s encased in something - fancy black electrical tape! So you can see the 5 capacitors. Interestingly at the very right it looks like this is wired to a conductor (that’s what it looks like to me anyway please correct me if I’m wrong) which would make it a true varitone as SulzerType2 pointed out above.

Indeed that is an inductor. I assume the black wire from the inductor is going to ground? If so, this makes the varitone a selectable notch filter as was the original Gibson varitone. If the black wire is going to hot then it would instead act as a band-pass filter (which I'd think would be particularly odd on a bass). In either case you could make a variable depth control much as described in previous posts

 

[Mike in MI]

Indeed that is an inductor. I assume the black wire from the inductor is going to ground? If so, this makes the varitone a selectable notch filter as was the original Gibson varitone. If the black wire is going to hot then it would instead act as a band-pass filter (which I'd think would be particularly odd on a bass). In either case you could make a variable depth control much as described in previous posts

You are correct. The black wire goes from the inductor to ground.

 

[SulzerType2]

The inductor looks like a small audio transformer. I've used these, but can't now find the invoice, etc, to figure out the specs. 1.8 H springs to mind for the primary coil.