Surprisingly bright-sounding 535

[cobo]

I already own a 140 that I purchased from Josh (Detroit Blues) a few years ago. I put some Throbak SLE-101 Plus pickups in the 140 as I didn't like the Seymour Duncan '59's that came with it (the bridge pickup was OK, but the neck sounded very dull and muddy) I recently purchased a 2012 535. it is knock-down, drag out beautiful and has a great neck/setup! The 535 also came with SD '59's. Upon plugging it in, I was surprised how bright and shrill it sounded; I expected something much mellower from a semi-hollow guitar. I ended up purchasing some Seymour Duncan Seth Lovers and I installed them in place of the '59's, but they also initially seemed too shrill and bright. After some further experimenting, I found that turning down the volume knob on the guitar has a profound effect on reducing the harsh treble. Just turning it down to 8-9 gets rid of most of the treble harshness that I dislike. The guitar appears to be set up with 50's wiring, so turning down the volume adds some resistance between the pickup and the tone circuitry. That additional resistance seems to tame the shrill sound quite a bit, so I'm thinking there must be some resonant peak in the treble frequencies. The additional resistance introduced by lowering the volume knob seems to reduce the gain of that resonant peak.

Turning the volume knob WAY down to 3-4 and then turning my amp way up to 8 gives me that woody/airy sound I was hoping for, which is the reason I bought the guitar in the first place. But I have never lowered the volume knob so much on my other guitars, and of course there is a lot of white noise coming from the amp with it's gain cranked up so high. It makes recording quite difficult.

I usually use the volume knob between 8-10 to control the break up when I was using overdrive. My other guitars don't seem to have as much of a treble reduction just by lowering the volume knob. With this 535/Seth Lovers, I have also found that I can get fairly nice mid range and treble tones with the volume knob up a bit higher, and adjusting the tone knob on both the guitar and my amp accordingly.

I still have an issue with the low frequencies, though. With the treble under control by reducing the volume and tone knob settings, any notes played with the neck pickup on the first few frets of the E string are hard to distinguish because they sound muffled. If I turn up the volume and tone knobs all the way, the bass notes from the neck pickup sound more articulate (although they're still not great), but then the treble becomes way too harsh. Compared to my 140 guitar with the Throbaks, it doesn't seem like there is fundamentally more treble response from the 535, but the treble that is present has some harsh tendencies - maybe due to harmonics?

I'm thinking that perhaps using a different (lower) value tone capacitor might be interesting. I know it seems counter-intuitive to use a lower cap value, but I'm thinking that I want to roll off more of the extreme high frequencies to reduce the upper harmonics, and leave the fundamental frequencies intact. I'm hoping that will help the bass strings sound a bit more articulate. A pickup with a different tonal response would certainly change things as well. There are a lot of variables: interactions with the guitar body resonant frequency characteristics, interactions with the guitar's tone control circuitry, the amplifier's response, etc.

I like the sound of the current Seth Lover bridge pickup. It has a nice honky/snarl to it. The bass notes with the bridge pickup are more articulate / less muffled than the neck pickup, due to being so close the bridge. Seems like a neck pickup with smoother high frequencies should allow me to keep the volume and tone knobs set higher, such that the bass notes are more distinguishable.

Sorry for the long note! I may pull the trigger on another set of Throbaks (SLE-101s this time) as recommended by Jon at Throbak. Before I do that, I would be very grateful to know if any of you have any recommendations.

[PunkKitty]

Putting a lower value cap on the pickups will make them sound brighter. Putting a higher value cap, like a .033 mfd, will darken things a bit.

[Rod]

There are a lot of people on here more qualified to speak to this than me, but... I remedied a similar problem (not as severe as you describe) by replacing all the (500K) pots and carefully re-soldering every solder joint in it. I think the re-soldering was the actual fix.

[cobo]

Putting a lower value cap on the pickups will make them sound brighter. Putting a higher value cap, like a .033 mfd, will darken things a bit.

 

That's true for a given setting of the tone knob. However, with the tone knob turned WAY down right now, it currently gets too dark and lifeless, so that means there's some "headroom" there to go to a lower value cap. The lower value cap would reduce the highest frequencies without rolling off as much of the mid-range, compared to the current 0.022 uF cap. I'm trying to clean up the grittiness of the highest treble frequencies, but preserve the upper mid-range and fundamental treble frequencies.

[cobo]

There are a lot of people on here more qualified to speak to this than me, but... I remedied a similar problem (not as severe as you describe) by replacing all the (500K) pots and carefully re-soldering every solder joint in it. I think the re-soldering was the actual fix.

 

Hmmm, that's interesting. Next time I'm back in there replacing the caps or the pickups, I can replace the pots and resolder everything.

[hobokenheritage]

The pickups and wiring will certainly make a huge difference. I'd also add that because 535's have a center block inside the body, they seem to resonate and sustain more like a solid body than, say, a 575. Both of my 535's have a tone and sustain very similar to my 140.

 

On the other hand, the 530 and 525 I have both have much more of a mellow tone with far less high-end sustain, much closer to the 575 in sound.

[Rod]

 

Hmmm, that's interesting. Next time I'm back in there replacing the caps or the pickups, I can replace the pots and resolder everything.

You have a point! Not exactly what I was going for, though. In the case I'm referring to, the previous owner left a lot of messy solder joints that I couldn't remove completely. New pots and clean wire provided a clean slate. My point was, the effect of all those carefully chosen components can be compromised by weak electrical connections, including the pot itself, which can be subjected to excessive heat during the soldering process.

[Spectrum13]

Do you know what value volume and tone pots are in the 535? Something like a 500K volume with a 300K tone would cut some of the brightness. Before spending hundreds on new pickups I would change out the wiring harness and adjust pickup heights. Many of us love the sound of Seths in our Heritages.

[cobo]

Do you know what value volume and tone pots are in the 535? Something like a 500K volume with a 300K tone would cut some of the brightness. Before spending hundreds on new pickups I would change out the wiring harness and adjust pickup heights. Many of us love the sound of Seths in our Heritages.

Thanks for all the helpful responses! Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving day with your families yesterday, too.

 

The volume and tone pots are 500k, The volume knob is likely an audio taper (from the way it responds), and I'm not sure if the tone knob is audio or linear taper, but whatever it is, I like the way it adjusts the tone. Neither the volume nor the tone "fall off a cliff" at a any point. So I'm inclined to keep the pot values and taper-types the way they are.

 

In addition to the sound being bright and shrill (to my ears) on the treble end, I have found the bass output of the Seth Lovers is also quite powerful. To me, it seems like these pickups have a slightly pronounced output at both the bass and treble ends of the spectrum (slightly "scooped" midrange). If anything, I think my personal tonal preference for my guitars is usually the other way around; I tend to like tight / lean bass sounds, and clean/smooth treble with a slightly pronounced midrange. I have spent hours adjusting the pickup height and pole piece heights on the 535 (e.g., 3rd and 4th string pole pieces raised higher than the 1st and 6th strings, etc), but it only changes the tone slightly. Of course, the tone controls only offer the ability to roll off the high-frequencies; the bass "is what it is".

 

You're right that a 300k tone pot would tend to give darker tone, as would a larger value cap. But I don't think those things are going to address the issue. Currently, I can dial back the tone pot to levels where the harshness is completely gone and the "treble" strings sound good. But at that point, the low E string notes become so muddled that they start to sound the same. I have also tried leaving the tone knob on the guitar a bit higher to restore some of the high frequencies and responsiveness, and then adjust the EQ on my amp (turn down the bass and treble on the amp). The amp adjustments also help tame some of the high frequency harshness as well, and reduce the bass output, but that seems to rob the guitar of some of its liveliness. I find that my other guitars (Strats, Teles, H140, etc.) require almost no adjustment of the tone circuitry on the amp. Other than maybe turning the treble knob on the amp up or down slightly; I can pretty much leave the amp alone and roll the tone knob around on the other guitars to dial in what I like.

 

Interesting note: when I had the harness out of the 535, I noticed it had 50's wiring. My 140 has the modern wiring configuration. I was curious how that might be changing things, so I built up an electrical model of the guitar, and ran some simulations of the volume and tone knob responses of both configurations (assuming perfect components). The simulations showed some interesting differences that you can get just by changing between modern and 50's. I'll post some of those results in another posting as you guys might find that interesting, but I don't think that's going to address the issue I'm having.

 

I'm at the point where the siren song of trying new pickups has lured me in. Seeing how it's Thanksgiving season and the shopping frenzy has begun, I "shopped" around on YouTube and pickup websites, reading the claims, and listening to all I could. That's kind of fun to do anyway, even if you're not in the market for new pickups. I decided to try Sanford Magnetics (very small manufacturer on Canada's east coast). Nate Sanford and I had an interesting discussion about this issue I'm having. He makes a pickup he calls "1812" that supposedly has a very flat response from the low frequencies to the high end. We shall see :-).

[LK155]

Sounds like you have this situation well in hand.

But if your new pickups don't solve the problem, consider an EQ pedal.

I got the Empress ParaEQ to augment my Quilter's unusual tone controls, which now remain at their flat settings.

It does the job.

 

 

[ironmike]

Subjective to the amp and speaker also.that is 50 percent of it..I find my 500k Pots around 3 to six on the indicators,the rest is the amp settings an f circuitry..some guitars mud out some amps and some guitars Pierce out some amps..but that's why I have 18 guitars and about a dozen different amps.

[ironmike]

Subjective to the amp and speaker also.that is 50 percent of it..I find my 500k Pots around 3 to six on the indicators,the rest is the amp settings an f circuitry..some guitars mud out some amps and some guitars Pierce out some amps..but that's why I have 18 guitars and about a dozen different amps.

[cobo]

Sounds like you have this situation well in hand.

But if your new pickups don't solve the problem, consider an EQ pedal.

I got the Empress ParaEQ to augment my Quilter's unusual tone controls, which now remain at their flat settings.

It does the job.

 

 

 

That's a helluva good idea! The ability to dial in the pesky frequency that's irritating me and dial that down would be very interesting.

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk