Friday, July 5, 2013

How a Guitar Tone Potentiometer Works

A common guitar tone control is a low-pass filter. Its made from pickup resistance and tone capacitor capacitance. Its called also a RC filter.

A tone pot in a guitar is used as a variable resistor (only two lugs are used). Its placed after or before the tone cap. The more resistance is on this path, the smaller amount of treble will bleed out to the ground. The diagram shows how it works in three different knob positions:


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