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Post subject: Need MORE treble!!!
Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2012 10:38 am
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Hi fender experts, as the title says I need more treble from my blacktop precision. Specifically talking about the bass itself, and not strings, amp, eq etc. Could anyone tell me if changing A) capacitor value, or B) tone pot for one of a different value would give me more sparkle in the top frequencies. I know it's a budget bass but it is otherwise a really nice player. Thanks in advance. Pete


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Post subject: Re: Need MORE treble!!!
Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2012 12:12 pm
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Tbonepete wrote:
Hi fender experts, as the title says I need more treble from my blacktop precision. Specifically talking about the bass itself, and not strings, amp, eq etc. Could anyone tell me if changing A) capacitor value, or B) tone pot for one of a different value would give me more sparkle in the top frequencies. I know it's a budget bass but it is otherwise a really nice player. Thanks in advance. Pete


Welcome, Pete!

Replace the two 250K ohm alpha pots you have in there now with two 500K ohm alpha pots. This will thin out the midrange and expand the highs of your pickups' tonality. The capacitor would be virtually irrelevant with the tone pot on '10' so you can keep the existing one. Lastly, go with a lighter gauge and/or stainless steel string set as either will accentuate the highs.

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Post subject: Re: Need MORE treble!!!
Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2012 3:55 pm
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Martian wrote:
Tbonepete wrote:
Hi fender experts, as the title says I need more treble from my blacktop precision. Specifically talking about the bass itself, and not strings, amp, eq etc. Could anyone tell me if changing A) capacitor value, or B) tone pot for one of a different value would give me more sparkle in the top frequencies. I know it's a budget bass but it is otherwise a really nice player. Thanks in advance. Pete


Welcome, Pete!

Replace the two 250K ohm alpha pots you have in there now with two 500K ohm alpha pots. This will thin out the midrange and expand the highs of your pickups' tonality. The capacitor would be virtually irrelevant with the tone pot on '10' so you can keep the existing one. Lastly, go with a lighter gauge and/or stainless steel string set as either will accentuate the highs.


Actually, the Blacktop has THREE pots: One volume for each pickup and a master tone. Since the pickups are humbuckers, the pots may already be 500K ohm. No way to know until it is opened up since the wiring diagram is not published on-line as of yet.

I've never heard of a bass having "sparkle". Its a bass for gosh sakes. :lol:

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Post subject: Re: Need MORE treble!!!
Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2012 4:18 pm
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bluesky636 wrote:
Martian wrote:
Tbonepete wrote:
Hi fender experts, as the title says I need more treble from my blacktop precision. Specifically talking about the bass itself, and not strings, amp, eq etc. Could anyone tell me if changing A) capacitor value, or B) tone pot for one of a different value would give me more sparkle in the top frequencies. I know it's a budget bass but it is otherwise a really nice player. Thanks in advance. Pete


Welcome, Pete!

Replace the two 250K ohm alpha pots you have in there now with two 500K ohm alpha pots. This will thin out the midrange and expand the highs of your pickups' tonality. The capacitor would be virtually irrelevant with the tone pot on '10' so you can keep the existing one. Lastly, go with a lighter gauge and/or stainless steel string set as either will accentuate the highs.


Actually, the Blacktop has THREE pots: One volume for each pickup and a master tone. Since the pickups are humbuckers, the pots may already be 500K ohm. No way to know until it is opened up since the wiring diagram is not published on-line as of yet.

I've never heard of a bass having "sparkle". Its a bass for gosh sakes. :lol:


Well, if that be the case, he can rewire both pickups in parallel. He'll get more treble than he knows what to do with!

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Post subject: Re: Need MORE treble!!!
Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2012 9:00 pm
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Martian wrote:
bluesky636 wrote:
Actually, the Blacktop has THREE pots: One volume for each pickup and a master tone. Since the pickups are humbuckers, the pots may already be 500K ohm. No way to know until it is opened up since the wiring diagram is not published on-line as of yet.

I've never heard of a bass having "sparkle". Its a bass for gosh sakes. :lol:


Well, if that be the case, he can rewire both pickups in parallel. He'll get more treble than he knows what to do with!


Given that the specs show no switching or coil splitting of any kind, wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the pickups are already wired in parallel and then fed to the master tone control?

http://www.fender.com/products/blacktop ... No=0148500

I'd be willing to bet that the Blacktop is wired like this except for the use of two humbuckers.:

http://support.fender.com/service_diagr ... A_SISD.pdf

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Post subject: Re: Need MORE treble!!!
Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2012 4:30 am
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bluesky636 wrote:
Martian wrote:
bluesky636 wrote:
Actually, the Blacktop has THREE pots: One volume for each pickup and a master tone. Since the pickups are humbuckers, the pots may already be 500K ohm. No way to know until it is opened up since the wiring diagram is not published on-line as of yet.

I've never heard of a bass having "sparkle". Its a bass for gosh sakes. :lol:


Well, if that be the case, he can rewire both pickups in parallel. He'll get more treble than he knows what to do with!


Given that the specs show no switching or coil splitting of any kind, wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the pickups are already wired in parallel and then fed to the master tone control?

http://www.fender.com/products/blacktop ... No=0148500

I'd be willing to bet that the Blacktop is wired like this except for the use of two humbuckers.:

http://support.fender.com/service_diagr ... A_SISD.pdf


No. I'm talking about the pickups themselves, not the circuit they are wired into as virtually all humbuckers coil pair are OEM wired in series.

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Post subject: Re: Need MORE treble!!!
Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2012 6:27 am
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Martian wrote:
bluesky636 wrote:
Martian wrote:
Well, if that be the case, he can rewire both pickups in parallel. He'll get more treble than he knows what to do with!


Given that the specs show no switching or coil splitting of any kind, wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the pickups are already wired in parallel and then fed to the master tone control?

http://www.fender.com/products/blacktop ... No=0148500

I'd be willing to bet that the Blacktop is wired like this except for the use of two humbuckers.:

http://support.fender.com/service_diagr ... A_SISD.pdf


No. I'm talking about the pickups themselves, not the circuit they are wired into as virtually all humbuckers coil pair are OEM wired in series.


Oh. Gotcha. Unless they are 4-wire pickups, sounds like major surgery (rewiring the pots being minor surgery). I would still like to know what "MORE treble" for a bass sounds like. :wink:

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Post subject: Re: Need MORE treble!!!
Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2012 6:57 am
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bluesky636 wrote:
...I would still like to know what "MORE treble" for a bass sounds like. :wink:


Surf music guitar solos keep coming to mind.

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Post subject: Re: Need MORE treble!!!
Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2012 7:45 am
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Martian wrote:
bluesky636 wrote:
...I would still like to know what "MORE treble" for a bass sounds like. :wink:


Surf music guitar solos keep coming to mind.


Well, except for the Beach Boys, I'm more into the Blues. :lol:

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Post subject: Re: Need MORE treble!!!
Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2012 9:56 am
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No. I'm talking about the pickups themselves, not the circuit they are wired into as virtually all humbuckers coil pair are OEM wired in series.[/quote]


Hi Martian, thanks for the welcome, and trying to help. I think I shall have to ask the question elsewhere, maybe in the UK where I'm from.

Thanks anyway. Pete :D


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Post subject: Re: Need MORE treble!!!
Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2012 10:13 am
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Tbonepete wrote:
Hi Martian, thanks for the welcome, and trying to help. I think I shall have to ask the question elsewhere, maybe in the UK where I'm from.

Thanks anyway. Pete :D


What exactly are you trying to accomplish? Martian already said what can be done as far as changing pot values. The cap value is irrelevant on the high end as he stated. Humbuckers are not known for high frequency response. They are more midrangy. I would expect humbucking bass pickups to be even more so. Your circuit in very simple so there is not much to do there without major modifications. Your best option may be to replace the pickups with something brighter sounding.

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Post subject: Re: Need MORE treble!!!
Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2012 10:18 am
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Tbonepete wrote:
No. I'm talking about the pickups themselves, not the circuit they are wired into as virtually all humbuckers coil pair are OEM wired in series.



Hi Martian, thanks for the welcome, and trying to help. I think I shall have to ask the question elsewhere, maybe in the UK where I'm from.

Thanks anyway. Pete :D[/quote]

Greetings and you're welcome. Aside from having your pickups rewound to guitar frequency specs, we've pretty much covered all realistic bases which surely are not country specific.

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Post subject: Re: Need MORE treble!!!
Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 1:15 am
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Hi Martian,
Once again, thanks for trying to answer. I feel that as the experts have spoken, it may be time to cut and run and end my short time with Fender. I would however like to clear up some confusion if I can. Someone asked what I was trying to acheive, I would point them to the title, and body of text following it. I said more treble, not all treble, or nothing else but treble. I used the word treble as I thought it was the correct term to use. For example, one of my bass amp heads ia a Hartke LH500 and it has a rotary control on it that is termed "treble", also Fender does make quite a variety of basses and a fair number of them have rotary controls on them, also designated "treble" in the specifications section. Turning these controls in a clockwise fashion does indeed lead to more treble, and it was this sort of sound shaping that I was hoping for. I don't even know what "I've never heard of..........." is supposed to mean, but in the context of the question it serves no purpose that I can see, other than if an expert has never heard of ....., then it doesn't exsist? I obviously was mistaken in asking about pot, or capacitor changes, and indeed the experts have told me so. I asked these questions as I had read that the Stellartone tonestyler worked by utilising a series of capacitors to raise certain frequencies, and thought that this seemed what I wanted (albeit, just a single cap change). Clearly I misunderstood the words that I read, and I apologise to the experts for taking up their time. Thankfully My working basses (Sandberg, and Warwick) will get me near to most of the sounds I need to fulfil my work commitments, and I shall have to get rid of the fender for one of the other dual humbucking passive basses that I tried that gives more treble, and sparkle to the top frequencies. A great shame though as I was looking forward to playng my first Fender, but as the experts have spoken, I shall take my time and look elsewhere.
I wouldnt call the beachboys a great example of treble (in a bass guitar context), Carol Kaye playing with a pick (legend and ibanez artist as she is) says more mid biased sound to me, but I'm not an expert, now Marcus Miller, Henrik Linder, Victor Wooten, would say treble to me. One final thing would be to say that I'm very aware that the blacktop is a passive bass, and most if not all examples I've used are active. I didn't expect as much boost as an active bass, so that's where the word "more" was used. Warwick's rockbass corvette $$ may be considered a fair comparison as its a dual humbucking passive, and it has "treble" for days (but it doesn't say or look like a Fender).

Sorry Martian to take up your time, and thanks anyway :)
Regards Pete


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Post subject: Re: Need MORE treble!!!
Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 4:40 am
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Tbonepete wrote:
Hi Martian,
Once again, thanks for trying to answer. Sorry Martian to take up your time, and thanks anyway :)
Regards Pete


Pete,

You're welcome and no apology is necessary. Good luck as it can be most exasperating when one hears the sound in their head and it just isn't translating through the amp.

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