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Tone stack: to scale or not to scale???

Started by Max, October 26, 2020, 05:07:44 AM

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Max

Talking about amp tone stacks used in pedals, I've heard many times that it's a good practice to scale the values in order to change the impedance, like for example divide all pots by 10 and multiply all caps by ten. However, I've seen tone stacks used 1:1 in pedals, including the schematic I used for my Orange MkII project. I have to say, after watching some videos about the original amp, that the tone stack in the pedal doesn't seem as effective as in the amp.
Since I'm planning something new (for bass this time  ;D) what would you recommend? Scaling it down? I know it's not a lot of components we're talking about, so testing it wouldn't be so expensive, but I would like to hear your opinion about this first.

Cheers!

midwayfair

You need to figure out the source impedance from the gain stage before the tone stack, which will affect the low-pass filtering, and the input impedance of the following gain recovery stage, which will affect the high-pass filtering.

Scaling the parts without taking these into account, or using the scaled or unscaled values without taking them into account, will be meaningless.

Max

This is the answer I expected and at the same time I feared most  ;D ;D
Mmh, back to the drawing board, then.
Thanks!