Volume pot / "treble bleed" mod on vintage Guild

[Jeff Haddad]

I really mind the loss of high-end when turning down a guitar, any guitar. I usually add a cap/resistor across the volume pot to compensate for the loss of treble, but I haven't done this on my '61 Guild X175. I'm pretty sure I did this on my since-sold T100D with Franz pickups so it should work the same but just checking if any others have experience with doing this mod on similar guitars?

 

[Walter Broes]

Hey Jeff,

I'm not a big fan of treble bleed mods myself (they always feel like you lose almost all low end once you turn down a little), the thing about vintage Guilds is that the volume pots are wired "decoupled" compared to say, Gibsons, which in practice comes down to the wires on the volume pot being wired in reverse.

The advantage of this is that you can turn down one pickup entirely with both selected without influencing the other pickup, the drawback is that the signal goes to mud even faster than with regular wiring.

It's worth googling "50's Les Paul wiring" for a different diagram than the typical Guilds, that has an added bonus, the way the tone controls are wired in this makes for even more travel on the volume pots before mud sets in.

 

[Jeff Haddad]

Oh yeah, I've read about the 50's wiring somewhere before. I've done the treble bleed on Fenders and Gretsches with mostly success using a cap/resistor in parallel (as per the TV Jones and Lindy Fralin sites). I also did it that way on the X550P (Duncan P90's) with good results. But now that you mention it, when I did the T100D with Franz pickups I was not totally pleased with the outcome. I'll try the 50's wiring method. Thanks!

 

[plagtr2]

Another thumbs up for the 50's style wiring. I'm also a big fan of RS Guitarworks pots. Not cheap, but the taper is SOOO nice!

 

[avagadro]

I tried a treble bleed on a Tele and while I liked that it worked as advertised, I found the tone to be a bit artificial, literally no tone change as volume decreased. 50's wiring seems much better although I'd like to be able to compare the two head to head.

 

[taabru45]

Another thumbs up for the 50's style wiring. I'm also a big fan of RS Guitarworks pots. Not cheap, but the taper is SOOO nice![/quote

Is that your dog with the wind in his hair.....err...mouth?.....great shot..

 

[die Bullen]

I had the treble bleed mod done on my '61 X-175 and the stacked pots were replaced at the same time with regular pots.
I'm generally happy with the mod because the muddiness with volume turned slightly down made the guitar sound terrible (IMO)