Please help me figure out my knob(s)!

Tonedef

Hi guys,

So my 'NoodleCaster' is yer basic solid-body three-pickup Stratocaster knock-off, with two tone knobs and a 5-position selector.

Problem is, I have no idea what the knobs do. Well, I do, but I can't really figure it out. Flicking the selector among its positions definitely changes the sound, although the knobs are about as useless as a one-legged man in a butt kicking contest. Twirling them from max to min or vice versa does bugger all, regardless of selector setting.

That said, I've only played around with the thing with my volume and amp level set to very low levels (my amp has an annoying hum even at very low gain levels, which I'm still trying to figure out. It sounds like a grounding problem, and although the plug is a three-jobber, I may need to fiddle with my multimeter).

Anyhoo... as I understand it the top/forward knob tunes for bass and the bottom/rear knob tunes for treble, and the selector switches amongst pickup combinations. Can anybody help me figure this puppy please?

Much appreciated!

ETA: I'm working off the assumption that there's some standard formula for how the selector on the strat functions, please correct me if I'm wrong. :-[

ezietsman

Usually on a strat type guitar with 3 single coil pickups the 5 way selector does the following:

1 - (all the way away from the neck of the guitar) : Bridge pickup
2 - bridge + middle
3 - middle
4 - middle + neck
5 - neck

positions 2 and 4 should be hum cancelling. Try it.

The 3 knobs is a volume knob (closest to the pickups) and two tone knobs. Tone controls on an electric guitar is just a low-pass filter, i.e. turning the control down increases its resistance and it bleeds more high frequencies to ground, making the sound less bright. I think the two tone knobs on a strat is for the middle + neck and bridge pickups. I may be wrong, I don't own one. ?

AlanRatcliffe

Strat tone controls are usually arranged so the one at the front (closer to the neck) operates on the neck pickup and the one at the rear operates on the middle pickup. They are both basic treble cut controls. It's a common mod to move them to the bridge and middle (or at least the one on the middle.

The pickup selector is simple:
position 1 is bridge pickup
position 2 is bridge + middle pickups combined
position 3 is middle pickup
position 4 is middle + neck pickups combined
position 5 is neck pickup

Position 1 is all the way back to the tone controls, 5 is all the way forward to the neck (BTW some people count them in reverse).

Tonedef

Thanks fellers!

I'll give it a shot when I get home! Any ideas on the tone knobs not seeming to work? (Apart from them being buggered?) Is it something that only tends to come into play once the amp is juiced up properly on high volume? (I haven't tried that at all (sleeping babes an' all)).

Oh, another thing. When I pick very close to the bridge, the notes sound much clearer and brighter than further along over or beyond the middle pickup (unplugged or not). Something tells me theres a connection between this basic string behaviour and the pickup placement....?

ezietsman

picking closer to the bridge will make the sound brighter, even on acoustic guitars. Its a matter of the string vibrations themselves. Being clearer, not sure, Its easy to make the strings hit the frets when you pick closer to the neck, make the sound 'less clear'. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'clear'.

If your tone knobs have no effect, there's probably something wrong. Turning them down all the way should make the sound very dark. Make sure you test the knob using every pickup selector position. This way you'll see which knob affects which pickup.

AlanRatcliffe

Tonedef wrote: Any ideas on the tone knobs not seeming to work?

1. Make sure you are twiddling the correct one for the pickup(s) you have selected.
2. Both share one pot and cap, so if neither are working check (a) the connection to earth and (b) the cap itself.

Something tells me theres a connection between this basic string behaviour and the pickup placement....?

Exactamundo. the bridge is the node point and string movement gets more constrained the closer you get to it. The longer (lower pitched) waves tend to be affected first (as they need more string movement) so their amplitude drops off as you get closer to the bridge, leaving more of the upper harmonics. Overall amplitude drops too (obviously), but bridge pickups are often wound hotter or adjusted closer to the strings to offset that.

Tonedef

Yes! Clearer = brighter. Damn all this new lingo! :-[

The knobs got a thorough kicking last night >☹. Turns out the changes are only audible once the amp is turned up quite a bit. That amp is probably just a heap (not that I expected anything special, really).

And it's a bit temperamental. From left to right, it's got knobs for overdrive gain, overdrive level, master and treble mid and bass. It's also got an on-off switch for the overdrive. Now, sometimes the normal amplification works, sometimes it doesn't (and I have to enable overdrive for it to work, which introduces that god-awful hum).

I guess you get what you pay for. The guitar at least is well made and works as expected.