| Revised 05/04/15 |
| Revised 05/04/15 |
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Why do we need the Volector control circuit? |
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An electric guitar is not just a louder guitar. The pickup filters the guitar's voice. Its choice of what to send to the amplifier is perforce a result of the engineering - the pickup senses lateral vibration in a limited region of the strings. Changing pickup position changes the filter, and blending pickup outputs produces a different filter, from the combination. (There's a well presented technical discussion of all this on J. Donald Tillman's webpage Response Effects of Guitar Pickup Position and Width, link by permission.) Guitars with one volume knob have no blending options. The A+B and B+C positions of a Stratocaster pickup selector switch have fixed blends. Most guitars with two volume knobs (including Les Paul and SG types) have a flawed control circuit. When the center "both" pickup selector switch position is chosen, the pickups affect eachother electronically. When one pickup's level is turned down all the way, the combined sound is turned completely off no matter how high the other pickup's level is set. Only toward the center of the knobs' ranges is blending usefully available, and the taper (change in level vs knob position) is non-linear, screwey. We avoid this by keeping the pickups' output on separate channels. Two volume knobs is an awkward way to blend, anyway. It takes an awful lot of practice to set knobs by feel, and more to set them without stopping playing. We think blending can be done better with a joystick. Kate Nicholes July 25 2011 |