Tone capacitor for Duncan Blackouts.

[warlok]

Gonna wire this set in this weekend. SD website instructions call for .047 on the diagram (most of their diagrams do), but it seems that I normally wind up with a .022 or .015 with my passives instead. What is anyone who has AHB-1 Blackouts using for a tone cap?

[h.e.l.shane]

OK.... on passive humbuckers with a 500K tone pot, .022 is the norm.. I usually use a .01 myself as with a .22 or higher, i think the tone gets muffled past halfway on the pot.. with a .1 it basically expands from on to half off into the whole pot range...

Anyway.. the tone control (even on active pickups) is a simple first order low pass filter.. The resistance of the pot and the Capacitor value both play into how much treble will be rolled off..

When you drop to a 25K pot like in the blackouts, you are changing the interaction a bit... (you also have to take into consideration the output voltage of the internal preamp in the pickup that requires the lower value pot)

anyway... take a CLOSE look at some of those diagrams...

the single blackout / vol / tone calls for a .1 cap (not .01)
The Two blackout diagrams call for a .47 (not .047)

makes sense... and order of magnitude down on the pots, and order of magnitude up on the caps

I know from experience that if you put a .047 cap on a blackout by mistake..... even an expensive paper in oil one.. your tone control aint gonna do much at all!!!! AND.. it shifts the mids a bit to my ears (even off, the tone pot still has an effect on the total circuit load and thus the resonant frequency of the pickup)

Try the .47s that come with it.. if its too much.. try a .22 or a .1 but leave the zero out after the decimial!!!!!

[warlok]

I used a Mallory .47 (place called them lemon drops when I got them..) that I had in my stash and it seems fine. I don't use the tone knob much anyway. And just to throw it out there, on first very low volume test, these sound pretty damn amazing. Way less compressed than EMGs and seem alot more raw and gainy. But completely transparent and every note in a chord rings out very clearly no matter how high gain I set the amps. Maybe more than the Duncan Customs and that's what I love about them.. Happy so far.