Something else: 50s vintage wiring vs modern and caps

[MichaelW]

Resurrecting this thread instead of making a new one. I'm kinda curious about 50s wiring, anyone using it in a tele? I still don't think I understand how the knobs are interacting. I understand it's somewhat of a treble bleed for the volume knob but I haven't seen a good demo on it to fully grasp how this works

I did it with a 2x P90 Strat. As mentioned earlier in this thread you can do "50's wiring" in any guitar with multiple pickups. I also did 50's wiring when I installed the Lollars in my Epiphone LP Special.

Edit: Re: Tele, I've always gone with traditional Tele wiring but I almost always add a treble bleed and wire a 4 way switch to get the "Both pickups in series" sound. I've never tried 50's wiring in a Tele.

 

[spi]

Resurrecting this thread instead of making a new one. I'm kinda curious about 50s wiring, anyone using it in a tele? I still don't think I understand how the knobs are interacting. I understand it's somewhat of a treble bleed for the volume knob but I haven't seen a good demo on it to fully grasp how this works

I think I did it on a Tele. TBH I can't remember but I'm pretty sure I did. I know I did it on my Strat and LP.

 

[SillyOctpuss]

I did it on a classic vibe tele when I replaced the pickups and it worked just fine. Unfortunately I couldn't compare it to how it was before because I changed the pickups and the wiring but all things considered I was happy with the taper of the pots and how the tone control responded

 

[psb962]

I modelled the various wiring options in LTspice and here is what the results look like in the frequency domain:

Modern Wiring with no Treble Bleed (just showing 1k - 10k range) - note how the peak frequency moves left as the vol control is rolled down (10 - 8 - 6) (tone is at 10). This is why things get muddy when vol rolled off with modern wiring.


Modern Wiring with Treble Bleed (250k + 500p): big change - now there is a lot more treble being preserved as volume goes down:



Finally, here is 50's wiring - note treble preserved in a more subtle way:



Simulation had pickup inductance 4.4H, resistance 7.8k, (ie humbucker) and capacitance 120p into a 500p cable and 1k amp load.

 

[andare]

I modelled the various wiring options in LTspice and here is what the results look like in the frequency domain:

Modern Wiring with no Treble Bleed (just showing 1k - 10k range) - note how the peak frequency moves left as the vol control is rolled down (10 - 8 - 6) (tone is at 10). This is why things get muddy when vol rolled off with modern wiring.
View attachment 57203

Modern Wiring with Treble Bleed (250k + 500p): big change - now there is a lot more treble being preserved as volume goes down:

View attachment 57204

Finally, here is 50's wiring - note treble preserved in a more subtle way:

View attachment 57205

Simulation had pickup inductance 4.4H, resistance 7.8k, (ie humbucker) and capacitance 120p into a 500p cable and 1k amp load.

I didn't like the treble bleed.
Maybe it's because I didn't experiment with values and because it was a Jazzmaster. The 1Meg pot is huge and it instantly gets muddy despite being linear.
The treble bleed sounded unnatural because the high end was bypassing the volume pot.
So I left it out and always play at 10. Only roll back with fuzz because that retains high end naturally.

50s wiring with 500k audio pots is just great.

Thanks for the graphs, really helpful.