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Topic: Matchbox |
Chris Harvey
From:
California, USA
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Posted 18 Jan 2011 8:52 pm |
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| I've heard good things about using a matchbox (I'm a relatively on this thing). I'm very happy with my fingertip, vibrosonic, and old sho-bud or goodrich volume pedal and a bit o' delay. I know this is subjective - but what does this do exactly. BTW I'm into the vintage 60's tone...not sure if they had an equivalent back then or if it's an improvement in order to clean things up. |
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Randy Wade
From:
Batesville, Arkansas, USA
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Posted 19 Jan 2011 9:16 pm
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| A matchbox serves as a buffer between the pickup and your cables and volume pedal. Capacitance in your cables attenuate or roll off highs like a tone control. Volume pots also rob some of the highs. The matchbox will eliminate this cutting of your highs and give you a brighter sound as a result. If you have a volume control that uses a battery or power supply that plugs in the wall,it already has this circuit in it and a matchbox would be of no use. I have a Goodrich super sustain matchbox which also gives some gain or a volume boost which I have used some to brighten the sound but most of the time I just hook up the old standard volume pedal without anything else and I am still happy with the sound. I do turn up the high and presence on the amp a little more than when I use the matchbox. |
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David Nugent
From:
Gum Spring, Va.
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Posted 20 Jan 2011 3:13 am
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| With the excellent setup you described, I feel that the Matchbox would be of little use. Where I find mine most handy is when I am using an inexpensive solid state guitar amp at a rehearsal or jam session, in this situation it definitely affords more tonal possibilities. |
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Erv Niehaus
From:
Litchfield, MN, USA
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Posted 20 Jan 2011 9:03 am
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| I play with a Matchbox primarily to have a tone and volume control right at my fingertips. |
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Will Cowell
From:
Cambridgeshire, UK
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Posted 15 Feb 2011 11:24 pm
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It's not so much the capacitance of the cable - that is pretty negligible unless you have a long cable run. The true cause of the lost high frequencies without a buffer is the self-inductance of the pickup itself.
Seen as "in series" with a perfect generator of signals, The pickup's impedance appears as part of a potential divider which means that less than 100% of the signal voltage arrives at the top of the volume pot. And as inductance rises with frequency, it gets worse the higher you go in frequency. High impedance pickups suffer from this worse than low impedance PU's.
That's why you hear the roll-off of the high frequencies , somewhat improved (but never truly addressed) by using a high value pot in the volume pedal.
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Williams 700 series keyless U12,
Sierra keyless U14, Eezzee-Slide & BJS bars
Moth-eaten old Marshall 150 combo
Roland Cube 80XL, Peterson Strobo+HD,
EarthQuaker Despatch Master for reverb / delay |
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Bill Terry
From:
Bastrop, TX
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Posted 16 Feb 2011 11:42 am
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| Quote: |
| It's not so much the capacitance of the cable - that is pretty negligible unless you have a long cable run. |
.. or a REALLY cheap cable. |
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Jerry Hayes
From:
Virginia Beach, Va.
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Posted 19 Feb 2011 12:13 pm
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I use the "Model 60" Matchbox mainly for the tone control. I love Ralph Mooney's sound so I try to match that with the tone control full on and then turn it back about a third for my standard steel sound, works pretty good for that!....JH in Va.
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Don't matter who's in Austin (or anywhere else) Ralph Mooney is still the king!!! |
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