How to use 20K pots for hi-Z guitar pickup?

Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.
These are fairly bright even at 100uA current!
Crazy, isn't it? :)

I often put an LED in series with the anode on preamp valves. The LED lights up when the valve is warmed up and working properly, so it can be a useful diagnostic while wiring up and testing, and later, to tell you if you have a dead valve.

The problem used to be that this LED was too dim at the 1 mA anode current of a typical half-12AX7 triode. In recent years LEDs have become very efficient, and now the problem is that the LED is much too bright, unless you hunt for a lower efficiency one!

-Gnobuddy
 
My apologies for going A.W.O.L. from the thread after starting it. Shame on me. It sure turned into an interesting discussion! Regretfully so much of it is completely over my head. I really need to make a serious effort to get a better understanding of this stuff. Did most of you study electronics formally or have you learned it on your own? Wait, that's probably a can of worms that should be saved for a different thread.

Since the primary goal was simply to listen to this particular high impedance pickup in this particular guitar with 20k pots, I wanted to take the quickest/simplest approach just to hear how it sounds, and to determine if it is worth keeping and putting more effort into.

As I mentioned in post #6, I found a 9v buffer that I had forgotten about in my bag of tricks. I finally was able to get everything installed today and it all works surprisingly well. The pots function perfectly. Amazing. Since I finished quite late I was only able to test it through a guitar preamp with headphones but my initial impressions are very positive. It doesn't sound overly trebly at all as I was concerned about. Tomorrow, I'll run it through an amp and give it a proper test.

It appears that there are a number of guitar geeks in the room, so if any of you are interested, the pickup is a Lace Tonebar, and I installed it in a 7 string jazz guitar. This pickup was designed for pedal steel guitars and is supposed to be flat/even and provide good note separation. It is more of a hi-fi pickup and this is exactly what I'm after. It really isn't designed to sound like a standard humbucker. If you guys haven't checked out the Lace Alumatone pickups, you might want to check them out. They are quite a departure from conventional pickup designs.

Since this pickup is a keeper, I think it would be very worthwhile to try to make one of the buffers suggested here myself, especially since several of you are already using them in your axes. Once I get going on it, I'm sure I'll have plenty of questions.

Thanks again for all the help and input.
 
Last edited:
Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.