Alumitone Pickups and Tone Control

[soggybag]

I have a set of Alumitone humbuckers that I'm liking (at the moment, you know how it can be with pickups). I notice the typical guitar, treble cut, type tone control doesn't seem to work well with these pickups. It sounds fine wide open but gets muddy really fast as you turn it down.

Reading this post here the author mentions the same thing and suggests a varitone type tone control. I built one of these into my Jazzmaster and it really works well. The control sounds really good and a nice range.

This schematic shows the idea. I used a 12 position switch and an array of capacitors I had on hand from 330pf to .047µf.

 

[Ben Furman]

This is more commonly known as a c-switch. A proper Varitone includes a choke, i.e. an inductor.

1 Mohm resistors wired in parallel with each cap will help avoid popping between positions. The Tonestyler control was/is a commercial version of this.

You could also try an audio taper tone pot.