Jesse Davey kingtone switch

mark_jwedge

http://www.kingtoneguitar.com/guitar/?page_id=115

Have just come across this and wondered if anyone had any experience of it. I fitted a passive mid boost switch to my strat a few years ago which in reality wasn't particularly useful and was a bit more of a gimmick. Just wondering if this may be the same or if it were a genuinely useful mod?

Also as it takes the place of the second time pot is it possible to wire all three strat pickups to the one remaining pot? My bridge pickup was a bit spiky until it was wired to the tone pot so would like to keep the load of the pot if possible

koneguitarist

Never seen one before, looks interesting, wonder if they work ok with an esquire?

mark_jwedge

Have to admit I'm tempted to pull the trigger on one as I'm really intrigued

koneguitarist

It's easy enough to wire remaining tone as master tone, will have a good listen soon.

thermionic

"Passive boost" is an oxymoron. Anything that doesn't have a power supply (i.e. battery) can only take away parts of the signal. There may be a very small resonant peak at the cut-off, but I wouldn't term that a boost.

I'm very sceptical about these kinds of things. They're just switchable filters. Maybe slightly more sophisticated than a capacitor on a tone control (there might be an inductor in there so you get a notch filter as opposed to a low pass filter).

Chalky

Same as a Varitone by the sound of the videos. I especially liked the sales phrase "This switch is fully encapsulated to protect against moisture." Its fully enclosed so you can't see the particular capacitor/resistor set up

Ampmaker sells a Rotary Switch for £1.50 for up to 12 positions. Add caps/resistors and you're talking under a tenner. The only questions are what values?

SunDevil

All I'd say is that Jessie has sounded pretty much like that since I first saw The Hoax is sepia tone back in 1995 - guessing he didn't have this mod back then (..happy to be corrected!)?

Incidentally, I saw Jon Amor playing last week and he was using a different strat (70ies as a guess) with what looked like regular strat pickups into a modern Fender combo (rather than is red strat with lipsticks into a 60ies Vibrolux) and he still sounded very much like Jon.

It's fun to mess around and tweak, don't get me wrong, but Jessie will sound like Jessie, Jon like Jon and you will still sound like you. And amen to that!

impmann

Was it just me or did all the guitarists in the YouTube clips on that page not only have the same sound, but all played the same things?

Oh and ffs, turn the reverb down boys...

Strat_a_tat_tat

£69.99....?!?!?!?!?

Ah... but I see the blurb says it...'Opens the door to tone'!

For £70 I'd expect it to open the door to tone and close the door to world poverty. 

thermionic

For £70 I'd expect it to open the door, plump up my cushions, bring me a beer and wipe down my strings.

Strat_a_tat_tat

thermionic said:

.... and wipe down my strings.

Is that 'prison slang' for something rather unsavoury?

SunDevil

So this is all a quest for a Stevie Ray kinda tone - did a quick search to see if I could find anything definitive and found this.. It threw up more questions than answers..

"Pots: stock Fender 250k. In the last tone position, a push-pull pot to cut down on hum, a dummy coil to prevent buzz, and different value capacitors to preserve the original tone."

Can someone cleverer than I explain this?

I may be reading too much into 'capacitors to preserve the original tone.' But it does tend to suggest that Stevie was trying to keep as close to stock

lukedlb

Did anyone bite or attempt their own version with hand selected resistor/caps?

Danny1969

SunDevil said:

So this is all a quest for a Stevie Ray kinda tone - did a quick search to see if I could find anything definitive and found this.. It threw up more questions than answers..

"Pots: stock Fender 250k. In the last tone position, a push-pull pot to cut down on hum, a dummy coil to prevent buzz, and different value capacitors to preserve the original tone."

Can someone cleverer than I explain this?

I may be reading too much into 'capacitors to preserve the original tone.' But it does tend to suggest that Stevie was trying to keep as close to stock

A capacitor allows the transfer of AC current, the higher the frequency the easier it pass's through the cap .... ( well technically it doesn't but pretend it does ) 
If we put a cap in series with the audio signal and then a resistor shunted to ground then it's a basic high pass filter  - the Cut off frequency equation is 

FC = 1 over 2Pi RC

For a simple  low pass filter we can reverse the cap and resistor positions 

However for an effective mid boost you would need an inductor, an inductor allows low frequencies to pass but opposes higher frequencies, the higher the frequency the more the inductor impedes the flow of current ... so I suspect an inductor is also used