TBX

[will]

Hi,

I am new here and look forward to chatting with like minded people.

I served my time as an electronics engineer and have a small repair business plus my main income is as a guitar tutor at a local teaching studio.

Does anybody have a technical explanation of how the TBX tone system works? I once read that it places a load on the pickup coil and so changes the response curve but I don`t know if I got this right.

This is purely out of interest, thanks in advance,


Cheers,

Will

[Teleologist]

Assuming you mean the passive version, it's a stacked 1meg/250K pot. At full CW rotation it puts about 1.1meg between the signal and the tone cap, effectively taking it out of the circuit and raisng the Q of the PUPs. At the center detent and down from there it's like a normal 250K pot. I believe the fixed resistor is used to smooth the taper, but it may also be changing the Q. I've never really looked at the circuit for the active version(E.C. Strat).

[will]

Thanks for that, although I have just purchased a few and they came with 500/250k stacked pots.

I am not really interested in the active version oporation as this is just standard electronics. What amazed me was how effective the passive TBX circuit is - one would think that there is a bass boost!


Cheers,

Will

[Teleologist]

If it came with a stacked 500/250K, perhaps they've changed it. Fender has been fooling around with pot values since they introduced the VN PUPs. The circuit for the 1meg/250K version is in both the Duchassoir Strat and Tele books. Most of the U.S. guitars went to the Delta tone pot(meachanically disconnects itself) and the specs for new Amer. Series guitars don't mention either.

I had one of the older versions in a Strat with Texas Specials to brighten up the 2 & 4 positions and it helped quite a bit.

[Fendercrazy]

Originally posted by Teleologist

I had one of the older versions in a Strat with Texas Specials to brighten up the 2 & 4 positions and it helped quite a bit.

Yes! The TBX does work great in the 2 & 4 positions.