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

[voltwide]

LEDs: Last year I bought some extra high efficient 3mm green LEDs from TME. This are fairly bright even at 100uA current!

[Gnobuddy]

Originally Posted by voltwide

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

[BassAmp]

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.

[Gnobuddy]

Originally Posted by BassAmp

I finally was able to get everything installed today and it all works surprisingly well.

Excellent, glad to hear you got it all sorted!

Would you care to post a photo or two of your unique guitar? It never hurts to have another guitar pic. to look at.


-Gnobuddy