Anyone tried one of these?

[Newc]

http://www.thdelectronics.com/quintet_sub_page.html

Looks like fun.

[hippietim]

I wonder if it's anything like a Gibson Varitone - those are much cheaper than $99 for the Quintet.

I also wonder about their claims of boosting frequencies since it is a passive device (even the pedal version doesn't use a battery).

[Newc]

Is the Varitone a circuit or is it just wiring tricks like phasing and a few resistors and such? Never seen one in person.

[hippietim]

Is the Varitone a circuit or is it just wiring tricks like phasing and a few resistors and such? Never seen one in person.

A Varitone is just a switch with caps and resistors. That's pretty much all the Quintet can be as well.

[DonP]

The Varitone also has a coil inductor as well. Still a passive circuit (requires no batteries).

[hippietim]

This is from Ed Degenero from THD:

Though it operates on a similar basic principle as the Vari-tone, namely, retuning the pickup coils with a network of inductors and capacitors, The quintet uses much higher impedance inductors wound with 44 ga pickup wire, so the overall signal does not drop anywhere near as much with the Quintet. Also, the Vari-tone uses one inductor for all of the setting, while the Quintet uses three different inductors, one of which is center-tapped, giving the Quintet a wider range of more usable sounds. As the re-tuning of the pickups' frequency response curves usually involves a shift in the midrange notch and midrange hump frequencies, and in increase in the "Q" of the coil, a portion of the response, usually in the upper midrange, actually increases in output over the bypass position due to the shift in the shape and location of the mid resonance. There is no increase in overall broadband output, but there is a real increase in certain parts of the frequency range.

[Newc]

Ok, cool.