Treble Bleed Designer

One passive pickup feeds a conventional volume control. The tone branch connects to the volume input (modern wiring), and its resistance changes with the tone position. The cable and amplifier load connect to the volume wiper/output.

The pickup is an ideal induced-voltage source followed by series resistance and inductance, with lumped winding capacitance from pickup output to ground. The tone branch is the adjustable tone potentiometer resistance in series with the separate tone control capacitor, not the treble bleed capacitor. A tone control capacitor value of zero disconnects that branch.

Both pot positions use the same illustrative audio-taper fraction: (81^{knob / 10} − 1) / 80. Tone 10 places the full tone-pot resistance in series with its capacitor; Tone 0 removes that resistance. Actual pots and taper wiring may differ.

Output is 20 log₁₀(|Vout / Vsource|). Resonance can produce positive voltage gain in a passive network. The graph displays −100 to +40 dB; true zero output is muted and shown at the lower display floor. The Volume 10 curve uses the same circuit values and stays unchanged when only the volume slider moves.

This is a lumped, linear electrical model, not a prediction of every guitar’s audible response. Pickup construction, distributed capacitance, magnetic and eddy-current losses, pot tolerances, actual taper, cable capacitance, amplifier/input impedance and component tolerances can change real results. String excitation, amplifier distortion and loudspeaker response are not modelled.

Technical references: pickup equivalent circuits and treble bleed network arrangements.