Filtering out lower strings...

[bifurcation]

(Yet another) weird question...

So... working with a pickup guy, I did a weird thing with my baritone guitar where I had him respin a humbucker so one tiny coil outputs two strings separately so I can run it to a pitchshifter and output that to a bass amp.


I have a stereo jack in my guitar so the blue pickups can be routed to a regular amp and the red pickup outputs to the pitch shifter and bass amp.
(obviously there's some bleed, but I'm pretty happy with the setup)

The one additional thing I've been thinking about is how to wiring up a high-pass filter into a stompbox, so when I turn the pedal on, it'll (mostly) drop out the lower strings to turn the two outputs into a sort of four-string-guitar-with-bass-accompaniment thing.

Long story short, I've been playing with an online high-pass calculator to figure out how filter out everything below the open A string (110hz).

From what I've read, I'm unsatisfied with how shallow the drop-off is, but I've read you can stack filters to make the drop-off more steep.

So (finally!) my question is: Is this a feasible strategy? I know I'll still get transients from the lower strings, but is this a good direction to explore? What would you do? (baring using a seperate output from that top-four-strings partial pickup, because I ain't rewiring that thing again!)

 

[Harry Klippton]

Interested in this pickup. I have a guitar with a stereo jack with the neck pickup going straight out and the bridge wired with volume and treble controls, and a kill switch. I use a stereo y cable and run the neck pickup into a pitch shifter end bass amp, and bridge into my guitar amp. I took the 4 poles out of the neck pickup and left the 2 in under the 5th and 6th strings.

 

[phi1]

Just a note about making the filters steeper.

A passive, single pole filter will likely be to shallow, as you mentioned. Cascading More passive filters isn’t a good idea because they interact with each other (unless you put a buffer after each one).

I guess I would start with an active 2-pole highpass, see how you like that, add another circuit after for a 4-pole HPF.

here’s an article

https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/filter/second-order-filters.html

 

[bifurcation]

Interested in this pickup.

Yeah, Rob at Gemini Pickups hooked me up. His work is awesome and really reasonably priced.

I originally asked him about building a two-string pickup. I was going to route out the the body and put in a second output jack.

But his suggestion worked really well!

I have a guitar with a stereo jack with the neck pickup going straight out and the bridge wired with volume and treble controls, and a kill switch. I use a stereo y cable and run the neck pickup into a pitch shifter end bass amp, and bridge into my guitar amp.

Whoa. That sounds rad as hell. ? I think I'm going to build a little pedal kill switch to bring in and out my bass. Which pitch shifter are you using?

I took the 4 poles out of the neck pickup and left the 2 in under the 5th and 6th strings.

That's a really cool idea!

 

[bifurcation]

I guess I would start with an active 2-pole highpass, see how you like that, add another circuit after for a 4-pole HPF.

Awesome, thanks! ?

 

[Harry Klippton]

Yeah, Rob at Gemini Pickups hooked me up. His work is awesome and really reasonably priced.

I originally asked him about building a two-string pickup. I was going to route out the the body and put in a second output jack.
View attachment 4518
But his suggestion worked really well!


Whoa. That sounds rad as hell. ? I think I'm going to build a little pedal kill switch to bring in and out my bass. Which pitch shifter are you using?


That's a really cool idea!

I had an old digitech rp100 laying around and it's got all the whammy settings in it. Im using the detune function of the whammy. I played one gig with this setup (hey, remember shows?) and everyone said it really sounded like a 3 piece band instead of a 2 piece.

 

[museums]

I considered this for a bit years ago but now just run full signal through both guitar and octave down rigs. The bass cabs don't reproduce highs all that well anyway so it isn't much of an issue. And the band has its own sound which works because you'll never get it to really sound like guitar and bass unless you write very specifically for the rig which can be boring.

One thing to keep in mind about filters is you hear a lot more than fundamental from any given note so just rolling off at the fundamental pitch won't really cut out the sound of those strings.