Tone control help for an electronics moron...please...

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Permalink Reply by Peter Greed on July 27, 2012 at 2:27am

Hey Tom this site may help, haven't done it myself (yet) but appears straight forward

http://www.muzique.com/lab/swtc.htm

Cheers

Pete

 

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Permalink Reply by Tom Lauten on July 27, 2012 at 2:39am

Thanks Pete!

 

Here's a question to illustrate how electronically inept I am...

 

On schematics like the ones you linked to the "input" is shown as a single line but obviously inputs to an amp ( e.g. outputsfrom a guitar) have 2 wires. What does that single line represent and what does that mean in terms of that second wire. Is the line shown representing positive only or something like that?

 

Having said all of that, is there a resource for those of us who are that electronically virginal

 

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Permalink Reply by Tom Lauten on July 27, 2012 at 2:52am

By this I mean some REALLY basic, entry level, electronics guidance...for idiots?

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Permalink Reply by Peter Greed on July 27, 2012 at 3:23am

Hey Tom, 2 wire one active and one ground. The ground is usually the shaft (tehe) of the plug and the active the tip (tehe again). the input of the TC to the tip and out put to the in(put) of the ruby the shaft to ground. Are yoou flying that plane? 

 

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Permalink Reply by David L. on July 27, 2012 at 5:41am

Here are a couple of links for tone pots
http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/Electronics/Misc/i-4000/i-4000_5.html
http://www.diyguitarmods.com/tone-pot-wiring.php
The articles in the second link give a good introduction to circuits.

The tone will not have much effect on the tone of a piezo but will work on a magnetic pickup. You can just wire it between the positive and negative of the input signal.

For the wiring diagrams the negative connections are shown as a hatched triangle or for input and battery sometimes not even shown to prevent too many lines making the circuit hard to follow.

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Permalink Reply by Tom Lauten on July 27, 2012 at 6:04am

Hi David.

Thanks for that.

Is wiring the tone set up for the Ruby amp the same as for the guitar (as those links seem to cater to)? By that I mean can it just be put "in line" before the amp circuitry itself as a kind-of "stand alone" assembly.

 

Sorry for being so dense  it's just that the maker of the amp suggested putting it between one of the capacitors and the volume control and I have no idea why putting it there is the sugestion as opposed to "in-line".... or am I making it too simplistic or muddling things up? I thought putting it before the amp was like having a guitar tone control off-board of the guitar and simply mounted in the amp.

 

Told you I was an electronics newbie!

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Permalink Reply by David L. on July 27, 2012 at 8:45am

Hi Tom,

You are not being dense I often find it hard to find answers to electronics questions - from my limited knowledge wiring a tone pot like a guitar will give a passive cut of the higher frequencies as you turn the pot control.  This can be added to the circuit at the input jack stage and would act in exactly the same way as a control mounted on a guitar.

I suspect if it is suggested to add it in a particular point in the circuit then others have found this to give the best sounding results.  Looking on the www the ruby amp with a tone added is called the noisy cricket http://www.beavisaudio.com/projects/NoisyCricket/#NoisyCricketMarkI note the pot value is lower (100k B pot) compared to the typical passive guitar tone control (because it is in an active circuit).

 

Is this a one off project or are you thinking of building more?  The reason I ask is you can probably buy the components cheaper in the UK from Bob at Bits box http://bitsbox.co.uk/ 

Regards,

David

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Permalink Reply by Randal on July 27, 2012 at 7:46pm

Here is a link to the Data Sheet for the LM386, it may help...

http://www.nari.ee.ethz.ch/wireless/education/PPS/PPS02/doc/LM386.pdf

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Permalink Reply by Tom Lauten on July 28, 2012 at 7:47pm

Thanks everyone.

This is a one-off as a practice amp.

I think I'll build it into the amp for the best results. I'll post how I get on.

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Permalink Reply by Tom Lauten on August 1, 2012 at 1:58am

Oh yes, I was a passenger in the helicopter I am sitting in in my avatar photo.

I WISH I was flying it!!

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