Fender Greasebucket Tone Circuit Comparison
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- čas přidán 16. 12. 2015
- This is my personal comparison of a "normal" guitar tone circuit with the Fender "Greasebucket" tone control. For the test I used my 1991 American Standard Stratocaster with DiMarzio HS-2 pickups. I played through my Marshall JCM900 Dual Reverbs clean channel. Both potentiometers were CTS 250k with Orange Drop .022uF caps, and the Greasebucket circuit has an added .1uF cap nd 4.7k resistor added. I recorded this with a Samsung Galaxy tablet, so it is a little rough, but I really don't mind. I'm still learning. This was for my personal use, but hopefully it will prove itself helpful to others looking to compare. Any helpful comments or suggestions are welcome, as are any guitar related questions If you're going to be a troll with useless remarks made to make yourself feel better, please, don't bother... Thanks for looking!
- Hudba
Side-by-side comparisons:
Standard tone control/open E minor/neck pickup 0:23
Greasebucket/open E minor/neck pickup 2:12
Standard tone control/open E minor/bridge pickup 1:10
Greasebucket/open E minor/bridge pickup 2:58
Standard tone control/standard tuning playing/neck pickup on 10 3:56
Greasebucket/standard tuning playing/neck pickup on 10 6:35
Standard tone control/standard tuning playing/neck pickup on 5 4:20
Greasebucket/standard tuning playing/neck pickup on 5 7:05
Standard tone control/standard tuning playing/neck pickup on 0 4:48
Greasebucket/standard tuning playing/neck pickup on 0 7:27
Standard tone control/standard tuning playing/bridge pickup on 10 5:13
Greasebucket/standard tuning playing/bridge pickup on 10 7:52
Standard tone control/standard tuning playing/bridge pickup on 5 5:35
Greasebucket/standard tuning playing/bridge pickup on 5 8:13
Standard tone control/standard tuning playing/bridge pickup on 0 5:55
Greasebucket/standard tuning playing/bridge pickup on 0 8:35
Thanks for putting that up, I probably should have...
Thanks for doing this comparison. Now I can make an informed decision on whether or not I want to try this mod. I have at least one guitar that I feel will benefit.
I have an American Special Tele and i really like the Grease Bucket circuitry, thanks for the comparison.
nice comparison! I can definitely hear the difference between the two. Great playing btw.
What a great comparison vid!! Thanks
Thanks! That was a great comparison. There is less tone difference on the high to low with the greasebucket, but it keeps your guitar from sounding like somebody threw a sleeping bag over your amp. Due to the craptastic sound, I've basically ignored the fact that the tone knobs go lower than 5, but this gives me a reason to reconsider.
What a great demo! Thanks
What a gifted player this guy is!!! Can't believe he's not recording.
Thanks so much Dan! I actually am finishing up a two different recordings that will be posted once I'm done. Thanks for the kind words and for watching. Happy new year!
Why would you say he is not recording? You dont know that. Why would he not record and gig?
@@michaelcraig9449 God, is he good. How can you be that accomplished in this day and age and go unrecognised. I'd buy his cd in a minute.
@@danh7739 there's so many people making good music nowadays that don't get that much attention
@@danh7739 from what I've heard/seen at least
Thank you for doing this!
Great video. No talking. Points demonstrated nicely. I was also looking at the PTB mod that makes one tone control a bass cut. If you could combine the 2 tone control types, it would be pretty helpful. I will have to read up on how to do this. Have a strat that I will be wiring from scratch so in a few weeks.
Suprised to hear Villa Lobos Etude 1 right hand pattern in a greasebucket demo lol. Great comparison and playing!
Greasebucket def sounds better! And I agree with your assessment of the name! Thanks so much for going through all this trouble, George ... I for one, really appreciate it. And BTW: Great playing! Some of it sounds a bit like the lead to the Monkeys' "Valerie", which I have always thought to be top notch. I'm hardly an amp tech, but I think that over capping an amplifier will greatly help the treble-down sound, along with an over sized output transformer. I also happen to be partial to 15" speakers, as well. Thanks.
Excellent demo. I've been wondering about the difference. The GB maintains the highs.
Grease bucket sounds better for sure. Other tone sounds like it's playing under a pillow and its muffled. Good thing the Am Special comes with the grease bucket and Texas special
Nice video buddy. Thank you.
I just added the greasebucket to my Strat neck mid and bridge pups. It decreases overall volume of each pup and pulls the icepick treble down noticeably even with tone at 10. While I like the fact it does not add muddy bottom, it (to my ears) does take some of the touch sensitivity and definition away. With the Switch position in (2) bridge and middle, I noticed the famous Strat "quack" was not as pronounced. the 5 position switch right hand side from top to bottom are as follows 1, signal out to vol pot. 2, bridge pup, 3. Mid pup, 4 neck pup. I added a jumper from 2 to 3 to include the bridge and mid pup. Normally the bridge has NO tone control, its wide open. . My bottom line is I rarely ever use the tone knobs on the guitar. I use the amp settings. So, I will go back to stock tone controls. I did add the treble bleed mod, and I like that. It was an interesting experiment. Thank you for the great video
Would you say this is similar to a treble bleed mod ? I had TB done to a few guitars and I didn't like it because it adds treble instead of a natural roll off on the sound and it defeats the purpose of having a volume control. I'm guessing it's the similar effect with this mod for the tone pot.
@@davidallen346 I actually got used to the treble bleed I like it ok now.
I may try this mod, but since I LOVE brightness ( you can always roll back ) I may try it with 280K pot to open up some more of the highs which you say may have been lost here. I normally just use a 0.047 cap which I think is more standard strat. I haven't played with 0.022 on strat yet.
Many people seem to dislike the greasebucket wiring scheme. I read critical comments almost exclusively. This made me want to try it, and I'm glad I did. It sounds great. People insist that caps and other components don't affect tone unless one of the pots is turned below 10. I disagree. The clean sound of the guitar I put it was noticeably improved by this simple circuit. This even with both controls (tele) wide open on 10. I'm really glad I did it. My ASAT sounded good before, but the greasebucket made it that much better.
Well done top job thanks
I LIKE THE VILLA LOBOS STUDIO NO.1 ARPEGGIO ON THE TEST!!!
I LIKE THE COMPARISON.
AS SOON AS IT'S POSSIBLE I THINK I WIRE MY BULLET STRAT WITH THIS CIRCUIT!
GOOD IDEA FOR THE VIDEO!
Thanks, Kirk!
Thanks for the comparison! Your left hand technique is really great, by the way. Minimal movement; love it. Classical/Flamenco influence I assume?
Sorry it took so long to respond, I'm kind of square to all the means of communication... yes, classical training, very novice flamenco. I love it but suck at it haha. Thanks for your thoughtful comments, good luck to you!
Bravo !!!
I got a similar effect on my tele by just taking out the .047 cap and replacing it wooth .015. This is nice though.
what it is really is a treble cut (low pass filter) and a bass cut (hi pass filter) on one pot. the problem is in the first half rotation it uses the hi pass filter. beyond the halfway point its just a standard low pass (treble cut) filter. after the first half of the rotation, the smaller of the two caps is taken out of the circuit entirely.
awesome demo, you just made up my mind for me not to bother with it and i am grateful.
i did a similar idea a ways back with a tone control on my channel, but it is only really useful with fuzz or a good bit of compression, as any time ya dial out bass you get a percieved volume loss.
what fender does in this circuit is limit the bass on the first half of the rotation by using the .01 cap to cut the bass as ya turn down.. this makes the treble seem more pronounced. again, beyond the half way point this cap isn't doing much if anything other than blocking dc that shouldn't be there.
in the second half of the rotation, standard tone control in action, limited to a min resistance of 4.7k... in other words, to keep from dialing all the treble out and shunting it to ground.
its not boosting anything, its selectively shunting highs to ground.
for the .01 i'd go more with a .0022-.0047... more bass attenuation. it really would likely work out better on a strat to have one dedicated treble cut and one dedicated bass cut.
i do this to all my guitars. cutting the bass content from the guitar lets you selectively dial in pockets in the mix, and control distortion level from the guitar itself.
anyways. nice video mate, thanks!!
Great explanation! There definitely is a perceived boost in one as the other is cut, which I would think is just that - perception due to contrast. It's like Rodney Dangerfield said: "If you want to look thin hang out with fat people."
as a fat guy, i must agree ;)
Maybe so, but you have great tone and technique my friend
shoot, i don't even have any chops anymore, just a 3rd-rate mostly white blues rock paddle slinger from the febrile muddy waters of the willimantic river delta. or something like that. rock on bro, ya ever need any pedals or anything let me know. peace!
I have a greasebucket on my strat and i put treble using 122 cap in duncan mod. No treble loss even volume 1 or 2
I have that circuit on my performer strat and I really like the sound I get from the 4th position. I'm thinking about getting fender vintage noiseless pickups installed, will I be able to do this and still retain the grease bucket functionality? Thank you
Yes, it will work. You can add this mod to any passive pickups, or change the pickups in a guitar with it wired in already.
@@georgestritter Heck yess thanks a bunch!
The standars switch in the bridge position seemed muddy and almost unusable to be. But the Grease bucket sounded kind of distant, I'm a cool way.
Why not get a mini potentiometer and set it to the position you like for the bridge pickup and have it controlled on and off with a mini switch or a push/pull bridge pickup tone control p[ot? Sounds like a plan
The Greasebucket sounds like Ritchie Blackmore’s MTC when set at 5 on both pickups and that is very cool also on 0 is has like a little Classical Guitar sound very very very nice BTW you are great on guitar and this is my kind of demo no talking just demonstrate thanks again
Thank you so much, I appreciate your kind words! From what I remember, the MTC is an inductor-based tone circuit. I may be wrong though, there's not a lot of info about it out there yet. Thanks again, be well!
Thank you so much, I appreciate your kind words! From what I remember, the MTC is an inductor-based tone circuit. I may be wrong though, there's not a lot of info about it out there yet. Thanks again, be well!
There used to be such heated arguments over the MTC on “Dawks” website and how it was built and I actually liked his MTC and made several copies just for me but it was not very different then the Greasebucket also the MTC is on the volume and not the tone but figured since it’s just passive it’s just the balance of the volume and tone either way and there is the magic
Im planning to buy a am special tele and only problem is grasebucket circuit which cuts the bass and lowers the output volume, is there any way that i can remove it and install a normal American standart circuit system ?
Yes that is possible. Use this link to get to an American Standard wiring diagram: support.fender.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000820646-Telecaster-Service-Diagrams
You may be able to reuse what is in the Tele you have and just reroute the .022 capacitor without the added resistor. Also remove the capacitor that is installed between two legs on the tone potentiometer. Hope this helps.
Maybe try the GB circuit first. I did not notice any volume drop, and actually the low end seems more apparent as you roll down the tone knob, it doesn't get cut. at least not in my experience. Good luck!
Do the values of the GB tone control components change with 500K tone pots?
The only thing that changes between the two pots is the standard tone cap to ground. On a 500K pot that’s .022uF, and on the 250K pot it’s .047uF. The .1uF cap and 4.7K resistor stay the same in both configurations.
Did I detect a little Villa-Lobos in there?
Those who have calculated the frequency responses of both the Greasebucket vs standard Fender tone circuits found that they are virtually identical throughout the range of the pot unless you are very close to the minimum setting. The Greasebucket can’t achieve quite as much treble cut due to the fixed resistor in series with it. So it’s basically a marketing gimmick.
What I like about is that the fixed resistor leaves upper-end treble intact. To my ears the rolled-down tone control darkens the timbre while keeping some clarity. In my experience it has allowed me to use the tone controls and still cut through a larger ensemble in a way I couldn't before. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@georgestritter The fixed resistor’s only function is to prevent you from dialing the resistance back as far. I think setting the stock tone pot slightly above the minimum resistance would have the same effect.
Villa Lobos , I'm also a fan.
Standard sounds much muddier, my Classic Vibe Tele's getting the GB treatment, thanks
Nappy dog hair really adds something special to the sound!
This guys playing kicks ass, but I cant really hear what this gizmo is doing to the tone.
Thank you for the compliment! The circuit has a high pass filter of sorts, on the highest of frequencies. To my ear, it allows just enough highs through so that there is still some semblance of definition around the notes, and they don't turn to mud. You can hear it on any Highway 1 guitar from Fender, not sure if they are still installing on any models. Thanks again, hope this helps.
Nice vid, the only suggestion I would make is to play the same same lick every time so the only difference we're hearing is the tone control.
Both circuits have their uses
The two circuits do different things. The grease bucket is meant to attenuate the highs 'only', so that when you roll off the treble you don't achieve that at the cost of simultaneously rolling off the mids and bass, otherwise...what's the point: everything stays the same relative to everything else, and your tone control is really functioning more like an overall 'perceived' volume control and less like a tone control, because our ears register the presence of the guitar's high notes (that which are really only mids in the greater scope of the full acoustic spectrum) with greater authority than the do either the actual highs and lows. Its the psycho-acoustic effect explained by Fletcher/Munson: czcams.com/video/5tPAaGQGvsM/video.htmlsi=6nKQn87UrEmwqQjA
While you may be showing mod. I got lost in your total amazing playing style. Jeeez
Villalobos
Done all this back in 1988 as a project in school to my fender 74 strat, with 3 pull push switches and different tones with TL-02 filters, sounding like Bkackmores MTC into a preamp, but like the 1011 aiwa..... show me something new!
You should have filmed it.
Kirk?
IS THIS A MUST FOR GUITAR PLAYERS ? I THINK NOT....
I don't think it's a "must" either, just an option that differs from more common methods of tone control. Thanks for watching!
@@georgestritter YOURE WELCOME....THIS IS A GR8 VIDEO....IT MUST BE USEFUL FOR THE PLAYERS WHO PERFORM LIVE..
A must for me. I love the GB I put in my Ultra Tele. I can rock out instead of twang out.