The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

I found this awesome tool while doing some maintenance to my 1983 Vantage X-88.

I was trying to make an appropriate treble-bleed mod, as the MMK45’s felt obscenely muddy at volumes lower than 9 on this guitar, something a single cap could not fix properly. Since I’m specialized in electronics I could have done the math by myself, but this amazing tool saves us all the work, and even throws a colored plot of the frequency response for all volume-tone possible combinations.

All credit goes to Carlos Lorenzo, author of this incredibly complicated and complete work.
Here’s the link.
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B76ZAU ... GdjdXFvbEk

You have to download it in order to use it properly.
Also, macros must be unlocked for this to work.

It’s very straight forward to use, although reading the instructions can become quite handy if you have doubts about how to proceed.
Not all types of pickup are considered, but you can modify the electrical parameters manually (which I had to do since MMK45’s are not included in the list; I’d like to remember where I got the specs from <EDIT: I found where the specs came from http://www.seymourduncan.com/forum/show ... p?t=187600, still not sure how accurate these are>). However, high output humbuckers came quite close in numbers.

Some not-so-common wiring styles are also taken into account, such as LP 50’s style, volume pot reverse, Load-R, linear taper pots... even the amp’s Z-in and cable capacitance are considered.

LP 50’s style is strongly recommended, since it consists in connecting the tone section to the middle lug of the volume instead of straight to the pickup. This, in terms of impedance “seen” from the pickup, means less “tone sucking” directly to the pickup. Instead, the tone section acts on a more subtle way “after” volume has been dialed. However, you must take into account a slight tone knob response variation respect to what we’re used to in some guitars, depending on the position of the volume knob. It also happens on the traditional style wiring, but in a different way; it’s the shape of the response curve that varies a little from one wiring to another and can be checked using the plots.

Hope this helps as much as it helped me.

Cheers!