I am new to CBG but am fascinated by the possibilities. This website and the CBGitty website are fantastic resources. I will be using pickups of some type and configuration on every CBG I build. The circuit diagrams by Ted Crocker are extremely helpful and understandable. The problem is: I do not know what values to use for the volume pot, the tone pot, and the capacitor,i.e. 500K or 1M ohm for volume control, 10K for tone? what for capacitor? Do these values depend on whether I am using a disc piezo or rod piezo or mag pup? Do the values change if I use two piezos (i.e. 2 discs in either parallel or series or a rod and disc in either parallel or series? While the standard answer might be to choose from CBGitty using their general guidelines and then experiment to see what sounds best, it would be very helpful to get some guidance from experienced builders to shorten my learning curve. Thanks for your help.
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Could I ask, is the point of having two piezos that they are spaced out on different parts of the guitar in order to give variable tone? Or are they supposed to be attached close to each other?
Yes U can get variable tone by spacing them out, but most people glue them together w/ a glue gun & place them near the bass side of da bridge(dat's da sweet spot) 2 piezos will give U louder output though.
Hey Gene, If yer overwhelmed by all this info & are confused wich way to go,as most people are in the beginning,just go over to Ted Crocker's Site & buy one of his pickups, complete with Pots/Jacks ready
to mount in a CBG.And then you can study how they're put together?
Happy Strummin'
Hi
yes 250k single coils and 500k humbuckers, cap values I use old russian paper in oil caps that are amde as they were in the 50's so oil soaked paper and foil in a wrap.
values
250k tone pots - 0.1 (strat)or 0.047 (tele)
500k tone pots - 0.022 os your vintage gibson les paul tone cap, but a 0.033 can be used or a 0.015 for warmer tone
Generally the higher the value ie 0.1 is higher than 0.022 the more high frequency goes through. For warm smooth tone
a humbucker with a 0.022 or 0.015 works a treat.
However i have had people use my 0.047 pio cap with a les paul to good effect.
My choice is a neck pickup 0.015 and bridge pickup a 0.033 or 0.047 value
The cap allows the signal to go to ground and sends the relevant frequency to ground the more you turn the tone pot
Logarithm tone post are best for tone and linear for volume, CTS tone pots work very well the big ones soudn best.
You can also get no load volume pots that allow the pickups direct to jack when on full volume.
These can be good too but cost a bit more.
I have played with most caps as was curious and sell them on ebay. I find the vintage russian ones are the best but some people also like orange drops.
Note they only do something when you turn the tone nob to warm up the sound or filter off the high frequencies.
This is only what I have learnt from books and experimenting lots, so it may not be gospel but I have had great feedback from people on the web. For example a modern gibson les paul has 300k tone pots change these for CTS 500k one and a 0.022 and you will have a guitar that sounds like the more expesnive limited reissue one.. and that is essentialy the difference
Regarding Pickups, this is a mindfield there is a dark art here from windings to magnetic forces
and resistance values. But for a cbg I would say a firebird pickup for distortion, or a 4 string bass and piezo for clean, or just buy a flat pup as they sound great neat to the jack so you can foget all about this whole conversation.
Hope this helps
Also google cocked wah tone cap or split capactitors on one tone pot., I aslo like the original idea behind a broadcaster set up that the tone pot mixxed between the front and back pickup... a great idea but we dont seem to do this anymore..
Good luck
Here's a diagram from somewhere on the nation.
just solder the other end of the Tone Capacitor to the Back of the Tone Pot.
I would also use da same value you used for Volume for Tone this should b fine,
I've been using 500K in my boxes with much success.
Gene, I am not a fan of the "reinventing the wheel" genre. I've known guitarists who have swapped out their 500k pots on their humbucker equipped guitars going for a different sound or thinking they were going to discover something and they all switched back to original configuration. My question about the 10 K pots was sort of rhetorical because it is so far from the range of what is commonly used it seemed pointless to me to even attempt to use one. I feel the same about the 1000K pots. If I want to experiment with something I'm going to use different pickups and keep the pot values that have proven themselves to be appropriate. Look around this site for the folks that make custom wound pickups and resonators. Your efforts will be better spent.
250K-500K is good for a piezo, I would use a .033uf or .047uf for a bleed cap,
rather than a .022uf,piezo are known for being more on the treble side,
this will bleed off more of the tinny treble sound. my fender piezo has a .033uf.
as for 10K pots, they are used typically for active pickups,
anything over 500K is probably a waste & will probably not sound very good?
Stick with the stock formulas for pots,they're that way for a reason: because they've been
road-tested & work.
I agree with Charlotte on this one. I will add that the size of the capacitor will determine the amount of treble cut made by the tone pot. The larger the number, the more bass tone possible. There are several books to have in your reference library and interesting reading. Thanks for starting the discussion.
Interesting. Clearly my CBGitty order should include 2 or 3 different size capacitors to try. Fortunately, they are inexpensive.
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