Hi,

I recently bought my first strat which has the vintage noiseless pickups.

I understand that the cap and resistor on the volume pot are to brighten the tone up as the volume is decreased, I have a couple of questions about it.

Firstly, why is the same cap+resistor combo not used on Strat's with normal pickups? Does this mean that normally Strats do not brighten up as you reduce the volume?

I find the general behaviour quite useful when using the guitar volume to control the amount of distortion on the amp but I'm finding the effect a bit too much, it's getting too bright as I roll the volume right down.

I'm guess that I can change the values of the cap+resistor on the volume control to reduce the brightening effect, please could you suggest some values?

Thanks!

I tried the included treble bleed mod when I first installed my vintage noiseless pickups. I wasnt at all impressed, I thought they sounded better without it. I also tried a treble bleed mod i found online somewhere, which I found to be a lot better than fender's method. Neither sounded as good as wiring the pickups normally though.

Heres the method I used.



I didnt use a trimpot. The idea of having a internal trippot is a bit silly if you ask me. Having a accessable trimpot to control the amount of treblebleed seems a great idea though.

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No no and no

Although humbucking, the output and tonality of the VNs pickups are somewhat limited. Consequently, there is not sufficient anything to warrant a treble retention system. Further, Fender overcompensates on the resistance value of the pots with these pickups in an effort to force maximum volume and frequency response out of them.

As to why the treble retention circuit doesn't appear as a 'universal' with all their different pickup combinations, this is because it simply isn't necessary or in cases like the above, even appropriate.

FWIW, after much experimentation on my part, the VNs sound their best with no treble retention circuitry across the volume pot and with 250K pots all around. YMMV.

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You dig?

Thanks guys, these are some interesting ideas. It seems there are 2 votes for standard strat wiring for these pickups.

Martian - I thought that these pickups were actually quite high output, I have moved them down as much as possible, they are flush with the pickgaurd. It makes me think I should check what pots I have.

So (excuse my ignorance) but in a 'normal' strat with 'normal' pickups, it doesn't get brighter as you roll the volume down?

By comparison, they really aren't high output as there are so many more factors aside from DC resistance which determine such things. Rather and IMO, their magnets are in fact, too strong. This is why everyone tends to adjust these pickups down close to the pickguard. Of course, if you are uncertain of which value pots are in there, it would surely behoove you to find out.



No, the tone doesn't get brighter nor was it designed to.

This phenomenon of keeping the tone up or even increasing it with decreasing the volume came about with the advent of ridiculously high output, full sized humbuckers, made to distort and send an amp into overdrive at the drop of a hat. Many players who have these types of pickups realized that they couldn't get any clean tonality out of them and as they lowered the volume, hoping for relief, these pickups would not clean up. Rather, they'd get muffled. To counteract this, this is where the treble retention circuit became popular and is essentially, most appropriate. The negative aspect is that most of the time, the volume pot's sweep becomes erratic so if it bothered the guitar's owner enough, (s)he would have to be constantly switching resistors and capacitors around in the circuit of different values in an attempt to make the volume pot resume its proper dynamics. Most players who use this circuit don't even bother and simply live with the erratic pot. Then there's a certain breed who feel that regardless of which pickups, pots or guitars, this treble retention circuit must be there. To each his/her own.

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You dig?