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Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
1st Tone: Neck
2nd Tone: Bridge
Both at 10
But thank you for your observations - and also for having the honesty and courage to commit yourself by expressing an opinion.
Shall we wait until a couple of other people comment before revealing what each recording is?
Clip 3 & 4 are the other way around, but clip 4 you hit the strings a little harder (or it could be where you're volume matching?)
Also, you haven't stated the value, there's a vast difference in the effect between say a 180pf and a 1000pf cap.
A passive treble roll-off control is a bleed. The term bleed is often erroneously applied to a bypass.
To my ears, some of your audio examples have an unpleasant trebly edge. This is why I asked about a tone control in circuit for the bridge position pickup.
The other complicating factor is that the treble loss is not caused by the volume pot, it's caused by the cable to whatever the guitar is plugged into, and the input impedance of that - so it varies. If you're using a short cable into a high-impedance buffer, you may not notice much at all.
1 and 3 sound brighter than 2 and 4, so they will be the ones on 10 if there's no treble pass cap.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I specifically (and pedantically) used the adjective "thinner" because I hear examples 1 and 3 as lacking in lower frequencies rather than having additional high ones.
Think of the way that a studio sound engineer might equalise an acoustic guitar to work better in a full band arrangement by removing low end to leave space for bass guitar and kick drum.
Clips two and four have the volume control at 7.
I was however very struck by how subtle the differences are when the volumes (input gain on my amp) are equalised.
That is also a factor I think - but not the main one. The main effect is real, but is cable-dependent. If you're using a decent quality cable under 10', into a 1M input impedance, it doesn't make a huge difference. Replace that with a 20' cable - or worse, two 20' cables with a bypassed true-bypass pedal in the middle, into the same 1M impedance and you will start to hear much more treble loss.
It's simply caused by the capacitance of the cable, which is in parallel with the lower part of the volume pot track, and to some extent the amp or pedal input impedance, which is also in parallel with that at the other end of the cable. This acts like a small tone control turned down.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
There is definitely a psychological component to the phenomenon. Some players desire that the volume should remain constant even when the amplifier's contribution increases. (i.e. The harmonic overtones created beyond the onset of signal clipping.) IMO, maintaining constant levels are what compression, limiting and compansion processors are for.