American Special Telecaster Treble Bleed?

Atom....I'll have a look in my eBay History to see if I can find him. It was a resistor and a capacitor, if I recall, soldered together with some type of high-temp solder that would withstand soldering the assembly in-place. It certainly wasn't anything exotic, just two components soldered together that, to my recollection, I soldered to the leads on one of the pots. I have to do a little research and open the hood, to refresh my memory. Will report back shortly.

 

Atom....Pretty sure the seller is valve-fx.
My eBay history doesn't seem to have the item. Vendor could also have been Haywire. Not 100% sure. And, I know I don't have the package, since it was quite a while ago. The assembly cost a few bucks. I would e-mail him and tell him what you're trying to do and see what he has for your application. I noticed that Fender has an integrated component of some type being sold on eBay for $50. I wouldn't think you'd need to go to that extreme, but if it's a high-end Fender, maybe you want to take that route. He does have the one up there that I bought - he calls it a Seymour Duncan kit. Pretty sure that's the one he recommended to me. Hope this helps.

 

This is where I installed the Treble Bleed Circuit:

 

I just installed a treble bleed on my new Deluxe Nashville Tele. It has the new Fender noiseless pickups.

The guitar is wired with 1 meg volume and tone pots. I've installed the SD design configuration(.001uf cap/100k resistor) with 250k pots. But never with the 1 meg pots.

That got me thinking if I would need a different cap or resistor for the 1 meg. In doing a little research, it seems that the resistor should be 1/2 the value of the pot.

I do realize that this is just a basic guideline and that you have to go with your ears. But I went with a .001cap and a 470k resistor. And the results, at least in the man cave, were very acceptable.

I've only ever used the SD configuration and maybe this formula only works with that design? We'll see how it works out live, until then, I'm happy.

By the way, this is the Tele I won in the TDPRI fundraiser. Merry Christmas to me! And thank you to the TDPRI. You will always receive my continued support.

 

Treble bleed + Greasebucket is my most common configuration. I don't know what guitars do or don't have them stock.

Treble bleed means no tone change with a volume change. Grease means no mud. What's not to like? Except the plethora of components crammed in the cavity...

 

Couple of more options: use 50's Gibson wiring, which acts like a treble bleed, as it retains treble when you turn down, no parts needed, just move 1 wire on the volume pot. Another easy option is to remove the neck HB from the tone circuit, so it is always full on neck tone, which I usually do anyway with a neck bucker.

 

To be clear, them's marketing words. Not reality.

No passive system adds anything. Grease (I believe) varies not only the amount of signal that the frequency cut is applied to (the pot), but the frequency range widens as the roll off increases (lower tone pot values). This means that instead of just cutting all that treble, and leaving only a ton of bass, as you cut more and more treble, you also begin cutting a bit of bass. No mud.

But this is not without side effects. Easy to do, but many folks (myself included) don't care for the interactivity of the tone and volume pot.

 

I use a series configuration. Something like a .001uf and a 150k.

 

My American Special Strat came with the Grease Bucket wiring. I tried to like it, but it just annoyed me. I re-wired it to regular stock, love it, never looked back. As AndrewG said, it's very functional to have some treble roll-off for rhythm volume level.

 

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I tried both series and parallel treble bleeds and the parallel worked the best for me. If you want a deep dive, check here.

These mods make themselves seem 'transparent' so I don't really pay attention that they are in there, the guitar 'just works' as they say. I'd +1 on the 50's mod because the volume and tone interaction are just annoying.

Here's what I used on mine:
100kohm resistor in parallel with 0.001uF capacitor. This Tele also has the greasebucket circuit and a series cap on the bridge pickup to clean up some muddiness since the bridge pickup is 10kohms. The green caps are modern polyester, the other parts are all over forty years vintage, I know because I pulled them from scrapped electronics when I was a kid. This is a reversed control plate with a 4-way switch which on this guitar means an 18kohm humbucker heat on the output.

 

To be clear for those following along:

Greasebucket changes bass response on the tone pot.

Treble bleed affects treble response on the volume pot.

Losing treble when rolling back volume is a side effect that some folks^ prefer.

 

I'm thinking on doing exactly that PLUS a bass cut like a PTB.

What do you think?

 

Welcome to the forum.

I can't speak to the bass cut. I can wire one, but I've never played one, as I don't think I'd enjoy it.

Thing is, more and more, I wire lots of fancy configurations more for the fun of it. Then I play stock, knobs on 10, all the time. The only thing I still use is a blower, bypassing both tone and volume, for a brighter sound.

 

I haven't read the whole thread, but did anyone mention the Fezz Parka/'50s Mod yet? It's another ''treble bleed'' on the cheap...

 

On the American Pro, Fender uses a combination of series and parallel for the treble bleed. I tried a couple in a store and though it kinda worked OK and as intended, I'm betting that some tweaking of cap and resistor values may sweeten it up just a little bit. On the plus side, the volume taper seemed natural and normal, but on the down side, the balance of treble to bass seemed to become MORE" trebly and thin as the volume went down. Of course, given that these guitars use the newer designed "V-Mod" pickups, it was not a direct comparison to the standard Tele's we may be used to. Here's a link that shows Fender's treble bleed, with component values:

http://www.fmicassets.com/Damroot/O...Telecaster 011306XXXX SM REV A 10-24-2016.pdf


Happy Twangin'
Gene
Gene

 

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned in this thread. To me, the treble management aspect of '50s wiring pales in comparison to it's overriding effect: interactive controls. Which I don't care for. Treble bleed is treble bleed, no trade offs (except in figuring out your recipe). 50s wiring is certainly easy to try, but not "free", IMO.

 

Hi guys,
I implemented the PTB as I wrote above, treble bleed on volume, grease bucket on tone treble and left the bass as is. The only thing is that I didn't have a 0.0015uF capacitor, so I used a 0.001uF cap. The volume and treble work great, but the bass is very subtle; I feel that the presence and overall sound drop, but not as dramatically as the treble. Also, I feel that the effects are only noticeable at the end of the pot range (for vol, treb and bass). Have you tried the circuits with LOG or LIN pots? Could this be the issue? I love the sound if the neck humbucker with the treble at 0, it is exactly what I wanted! I can't wait to try it with the tonerider I ordered.

 

I drew this, but haven't actually tried it. Note, the bass cut pot is 1M audio (log), reverse. This is for single coils, so vol and tone (treble cut) are 250k audio. No treble bleed shown.

 

I hate treble bleed caps/resistors and love the loss of treble at low guitar volumes.

I think the term "Treble Bleed" is misleading. It gives you the thought of treble bleeding off or treble loss.

I think it needs to be re-named something complicated like the government would call it "Guitar Volume Potentiometer, Low Volume Setting, Treble Compensating Circuit"

being a retired X government employee, now that I could understand:>)