Fender Tone Pot Capacitor

Leo fender s design calls for a 1 meg reverse taper pot with a 002 mfd capacitor.

Fender tone pot capacitor.

Because 250k pots are great for single coil pickups they are the most common with fender ibanez schecter and similar guitars. Another thing to remember is that the tone cap is always part of the circuit and even influences the guitar s tone when the tone pot is left fully open that s the reason the tone cap is such an important part of the sound. The capacitance of the tone cap determines the cut off point of the high frequencies. When to use 1 meg pots.

On a tone pot instead of sending the complete signal to ground the capacitor only sends a part of the signal to ground. How you integrate it into your wiring plan adds. When the tone pot is all the way clockwise the full signal of the bass pickups come through. The tone pots and capacitors combine to create a low pass filter.

One end soldered to the pot s arm and the second leg is soldered to the bottom of the pot or somewhere else in the ground circuit. The more you turn back the tone pot the more the input lug connects to the right most lug. A low capacitance tone cap 3300 pf for example will pass the least amounts of high end chime to ground. The fender marshall vox tmb treble mid bass tone stack has been around since the 1950 s and has become a staple with fender and marshall amps when marshall copied the fender 5f6 a bassman almost verbatim to create the jtm45 amplifier the fender tmb tone stack came with it and it s still being designed into new amps today.

The smaller the capacitor like 022 015 or less the less the treble is removed this is because the filter frequency shifts higher so more high frequency remains. Tone capacitors are the most misunderstood component in a guitar. Guitar caps are used to manipulate specific frequencies to shape tone. You can experiment with the capacitor value in the range of 001 mfd to 003 mfd.

The tone cap is impeding low frequencies but allowing the high frequencies to pass through to ground. What this is doing is sending more electricity through the tone cap. I ve marked the capacitor wires in blue and given a top and bottom view of the wiring setup it s a fairly standard setup and even though yours may appear a bit different the capacitor tone pot are likely the same. Orange drop these legendary caps were formerly produced by sprague.

In simple terms the tone pot and capacitor act as a low pass filter cutting the treble as you turn the pot counterclockwise. For example a 001 mfd capacitor provides a more dramatic bass cut and a 003 mfd is more subtle. This gives you that rolled off darker tone. As you turn the pot counter clockwise treble frequencies are cut.

The easiest way to think of a tone capacitor is that in the typical tone circuit they are a high frequency removal device.