Feedback Pot, replacement? (Days away from my own Tode)

[DoS]

Hey there, I've decided to build a Tode. The size is fantastic for where I am housed currently! (Plus I assume it sounds awesome)

Anyway I was looking at the parts (pictures) and noticed the Feedback pot looks like a pretty standard one. Thus far Ive been replacing all of them normal ones in the guitar, pedals, with stepped attenuators. I know some people can't get down with the concept of clicking, but I'd like to see how much retention of the finer sound that comes with strings can retain. But here is the thing, I've never seen the Tode schematic so I don't know if I should ever want to do this? Plus I don't know the value yet.

Thanks!

[Doc B.]

I suggest you build it stock, and then modify it. Otherwise you will never know if the change makes a difference. I think that reducing the fine tuning capability of pot to a series of fixed steps will make the circuit less adaptable to different pickup output levels and give you less control over hitting the sweet spot that lets you go in and out of overdrive simply by how hard you play. But I have not done the experiment myself.

[DoS]

As you know in high end audio every component matters.

Yet in guitars we usually don't care, or pick resistors and capacitors for tone. Then we sometimes spend 600 euro on lacquer for the guitar... (don't know the conversion) It all matter somehow. To me pots seem like a potential tone suck. I know they are in high end audio. Every time I switch to something better the results have always been worth it. The thing with guitars is you have SO MANY in the chain, you don't often get the opportunity to try something else unless build it all yourself. Which is what I am doing 

In fact I'm using a cheap guitar, but putting in stepped attenuators, a Jupiter vintage sound bypass tone cap, and finishing it with nothing but burgundy resin. The Tode is exciting because I know you guys make superb sounding equipment! But the trick here isn't just accurate representation, but to be able to add some overdrive and exemplify the tube sound since most of us are not good enough to play an electric guitar with the cleanest signal possible.

The one thing I will be doing though, is using a form of a cheaper power conditioner between the Tode and the wall. In my experience the headroom and tone improvements to eliminating a lot of differential mode noise, well is out standing to even expensive guitar tube amplifiers.

[Doc B.]

Actually i think audiophiles and guitar players are very much alike. Some guys don't care about the technical aspects and just want to listen or play music and others obsess over every little detail. There's room for all of that. My point was simply that by hearing the stock pot first you can then make an informed judgment about the change brought about by the attenuator. I do feel it is sometimes important not to try to out-think one's self. I am often guilty of this. My latest project is planning out my fourth homebrew guitar, this one an archtop jazz box. I have been studying the subject every free minute. But one can only listen to demo MP3s of various guitars and parts and read theories about tailpiece moment of inertia and how much a surface mounted pickup will curtail feedback vs a free floater, etc, etc. so much. At some point you have to buy some parts, put something playable together and then start changing one thing at a time in order to figure out if the change really works the way you think it will. 

[DoS]

I know what you mean, easy to get zealous. Perhaps I'll do that first.

In my audiophile system I'm at a point where every single thing in the line of signal that I change makes a noticeable difference to anyone listening. It is just that transparent these days (power conditioning helps a lot).

This is what I am trying in order to improve my guitar that is cheap and I traded for. It seems like a legit sentiment because every guitar I've ever heard in my life that I like the sound of, has a minimal finish. Even old plywood and cardboard acoustic cheap guitars with less finish sound awesome to me (limited playing styles though). Every guitar with the 2mm thick finish on it I hear doesn't sound that great. My friends Tele with a near-see-through finish sounds way better than all the other ones I've heard.

To me it seems like more talented pickups will always be useful, but what actually triggers the pleasure connections in the brain may have little to do with the easily identifiable sounds that occur during pickup changes.

If you are interested I'll let you know how much some simple power conditioning does for the Tode after I get it made. I've been working on a portable edition that is more affordable. Audiophile units are terrible expensive but have different needs.

[Doc B.]

I have been down the various finish techniques road. I blew a hand rubbed black nitro lacquer finish on my first Tele. My next tele build got a very tedious french polish finish. The Strat I built most recently has a very thin and marvelously easy to do Tru-Oil finish (though getting off the crappy Minwax poly finish that the seller had put on it was a royal PITA). I have a 335 with a factory finish that in a lot of ways blows all those guitars into the weeds.

My experience indicates that the type tone wood very much dominates the sound vs. the type of finish. The alder Strat body sounds much better to me than the basswood or the mahogany and spalted maple of the two tele bodies (mahogany is a terrible choice for a Tele body!) The thicker finishes simply seem to damp the resonance a bit. There are demos on the web you can listen to, where someone has taken a polyester finish off a strat and made before and after recordings during the project. There is a difference, but it is pretty subtle. I would say strings, pickups, neck and body material, and a couple other things totally dominate over the finish. Not that I am condemning the idea that thin finished should sound best, obviously I thought enough of it to try it myself. Interestingly one of the guitars that I really love the sound of is a Korean made Epi hollowbody with the typical heavy polyester finish. I that case it may be that the poly actually makes the guitar a little more mellow, which I happen to like.

I have also experimented with various shielding techniques, pickups, capacitor types, cabling, strings, etc., etc. ad nauseum. None of this has even begun to compensate for my lack of skill and thus I also rely upon other, competent players to help me in my evaluations.

And I must say the the old homily that none of this matters as much as knowing how to play well enough that you can adapt to any instrument rings true for me. While not much of a guitar player, I did pursue handgun shooting for a few years and got to the point where I could hit the target with sufficient enough precision to outshoot my instructor, with pretty much any properly functioning handgun regardless of how many trick parts there were on it. In the end I sold off most of the guns and just kept a couple that I felt most comfortable with. I will be pursuing guitar lessons soon, with a local guitar teacher who mentions that he sold his guitar collection a few years ago and just kept the one Tele that he liked to play best. I really liked reading that.

[Doc B.]

Oooh, I also have to add that Eileen just informed me that she has been talking to the production manager at Lollar pickups about a new Charlie Christian pickup for my jazz box project. Woo hoo! I do love that woman!

[Paul Joppa]

Just a note here - I'm not a guitar player myself - but I do know a few, and have heard that the resonances and damping of the neck vibrations have a substantial influence on playability. Hey, if you play better I imagine that trumps the guitar's own sound!?

[Hank Murrow]

Say Paul; There's a guy here in Eugene that makes a guitar neck of carbon fiber. He calls it the Moses Stick, and according to some famous players it's 'The Bomb'.

http://mosesgraphite.com/

Anyway, you might find Steve Moser's site interesting.

Cheers, Hank

[DoS]

I imagine a carbon neck could sound amazing, or actually like nothing at all but to your benefit.

Unfortunately I'll be playing into the Tode with about the cheapest guitar ever made. Not much I can do about that. It didn't cost me anything other than two capacitors, stepped attenuator, resin, and turpentine.

A friend of mine builds guitars with Piezo electronic pickups in them out of wood he gets from a place he works that is a reuse recycle building material place. I'm always surprised how nice they sound. But that I think sounds good might be different than other people. For me it is all kind of fatigue levels and not really the array of sounds. Most of my friends who make music are obsessed with the amount of sounds, and not how the sounds actually sound.

I too, need some skills. A friend is teaching me how to play.

Never been great at shooting, but proficient. I guess some video games I've been competition good at but I don't even like playing them anymore (nor could I on my 8 year old laptop running Linux Mint).