nocturne has strange effect on gtr vol pot

Hi im andy (username : booty) from England and ive recently joined the forum. Ive got a lime gold gretsch hot rod with tv jones pickups and i use a deluxe memory man delay . I have recently bought a nocturne pedal off Tavo and it has TOTALLY improved the tone. Over the years I have done all the right things to improve the sound e.g got a thin top gretsch, got tv jones pickups, drilled alluminium saddles, delrin nut etc) Well obviously the tv jones filtertrons were a major improvement but the NOCTURNE! what a difference! So first of all may I join the rest of you folks in saying " Tavo - you are a star for making this pedal - thank you "
The only problem i have is that i am running it through a fender hot rod deluxe ( I have a Marsh bassman head on order)
so until that arrives ive got to use the fender hotrod for all my gigs. Anyway the problem is that my vol pot (equipped with tv jones treble bleed kit) has lost its smooth volume taper but only when the nosturne is on. What happens is that when i try and back the volume off from full, it drastically drops in volume - its almost like an on/off switch which makes it impossible to do that sleepwalk 'bowing ' technique and for gigs i have to run the guitar vol flat out all the time and cant back off the vol cos its too drastic. I know that the pedal is supposed to run through non- master volume amps so should i just sit tight and wait for my Marsh bassman head to arrive and hope that the problem will be solved or is there something I am either doing wrong or need to fix

Yep you are not alone - mine does the same with all of my Filtertron equipped guitars (some have treble bleeds whilst others dont) through Fender non master volume amps - I must try it with my P90 and Dynasonic guitars to see how they react.

hmmm.... if you have the bass cut fully on (dialed full left) and you have
the gain fully on (dialed full right) youre saying you cant control both gain and volume?
I built the pedal around my SSU (tvclassics) and I have a .001uf cap in parallel with a 150Kohm resistor on the CTS 500K audio taper pot for
a treble bleed (some have said they need to place the cap n resistor
in series with eachother across the terminals)
and it works very smoothly and accurately like you see setzer doing with
his re301 and bassman. This of course is with the proper amp and guitar
so now I guess I need to go try it right now through my master volume
Tophat super Deluxe, and with my tele that has filtertrons..

stay tuned..

...okay I'm back.. YEP when running the tvjones filtertron equipped
Telecaster with just the simple 500Kpot and nocturne's gain up high
the taper is only avail within the first 1/8 of a turn when going through
my master volume tophat superdeluxe.
Tried it with the SSU (treble bleed) and it has much more taper but the bass dissappears very quickly and the sound is instantly clean.

Not the case with the blonde bassman, like I said it does what its suppose to when applied as designed.

thanks guys, more to learn and you are part of this thing. its like global
R&D.. 'cept I dont know what to do any different. I never use my volume control at all. Infact I took out the stupid tone switch and put in
a push-pull tone pot that is bypassed most of the time.


...okay again back after 1/2hr of fartin with the same set up but instead of using my Nocturne I tried the boost function of my Tim and Burn Unit.. Taper works fine... with those units. ??

tvthewiredturtle wrote:

hmmm.... if you have the bass cut fully on (dialed full left) and you have
the gain fully on (dialed full right) youre saying you cant control both gain and volume?
I built the pedal around my SSU (tvclassics) and I have a .001uf cap in parallel with a 150Kohm resistor on the CTS 500K audio taper pot for
a treble bleed (some have said they need to place the cap n resistor
in series with eachother across the terminals)
and it works very smoothly and accurately like you see setzer doing with
his re301 and bassman. This of course is with the proper amp and guitar
so now I guess I need to go try it right now through my master volume
Tophat super Deluxe, and with my tele that has filtertrons..

stay tuned..

...okay I'm back.. YEP when running the tvjones filtertron equipped
Telecaster with just the simple 500Kpot and nocturne's gain up high
the taper is only avail within the first 1/8 of a turn when going through
my master volume tophat superdeluxe.
Tried it with the SSU (treble bleed) and it has much more taper but the bass dissappears very quickly and the sound is instantly clean.

Not the case with the blonde bassman, like I said it does what its suppose to when applied as designed.

thanks guys, more to learn and you are part of this thing. its like global
R&D.. 'cept I dont know what to do any different. I never use my volume control at all. Infact I took out the stupid tone switch and put in
a push-pull tone pot that is bypassed most of the time.




...okay again back after 1/2hr of fartin with the same set up but instead of using my Nocturne I tried the boost function of my Tim and Burn Unit.. Taper works fine... with those units. ??

Thanks for investigating this TV - your efforts are much appreciated

I thought it was just the way the original circuit in the 301 reacted

FWIW.. in the RE-301 you have 3 static impedence choices to switch
to. one for line level (keyboards), one for guitar/bass, and one for
Mic. As well there is an input gain control/peak level control.

While I sought to stay as close to the original circuit as possible, I had to
incorporate some other things in order for you the guitarist to
not to have to run 50ft of guitar cable,etc..

Also there wasnt a real need to have that 3 pos. switch for the input and 3 pos. switch for the recovery so... you effectively have a rotary control that lets you run from setzers usual sound up to the max
gain avail on the preamp of the RE301.
That would be -50db on input switch and -50db on the output switch.
When you do switch to that high impedence setting on an RE-301 and turn the input peak level just where the clip light starts going on... the Gretsch's volume control behaves exactly like when plugged into the
Nocturne.. more or less you have full signal until you turn the guitar vol.
down and then the taper just dissappears.
In that regard,
the Nocturne is behaving just as the re301 does.

If.. and only when I switch the input selector db of the RE301 back to
"instrument" , turn the input gain up to 2 oclock and then plug in some freakin 40ft of cable, crank the amp up to 6 and dime the treble and presence of the amp, can I get a decent volume taper (swell) from the gretsch volume pot. This is what you see setzer doing and is totally impractical for ANY gig most players are allowed to play at in most venues.

Again this is why I made this Nocturne pedal... a practical application, although I never considered volume swells cuz I dont do em..my bad.
I think I may have to try a 500K reverse linear taper pot on the guitars master volume... that might give you exactly what you want??

thanks for the heads up and definitely share whats happening, it helps big time.