TBX Tone Control Pot

LionAquaLooper · June 2023

Anybody ever tried putting one of these on their strat? Is it worth it?

ICBM · June 2023

Fender did, tens of thousands of them... it was stock on the USA Standard Strat from about 1984 to 2000.

TBX stands for TotalBolloX

. It does not 'expand bass and treble' as Fender claimed (officially it stands for 'Treble and Bass eXpander'), it artificially strangles the tone when it's at the centre detent so you *think* it adds bass and treble as you turn it away from there.

It somehow manages to go from dull to shrill without passing through good.

(It does actually work well with an active guitar, which is what it was designed for - the Elite Strat - why Fender then fitted it to passive ones, I have no idea. It's also possible to use it for different functions than it was designed for, where it can sometimes be useful.)

nacnudnai · June 2023

I had (still own one) two 1995 US Strats with the TBX. As ICBM says, the middle notch is commonly said to operate as a normal tone pot - it definitely doesn't. I've since removed it from any Strats I own/owned, so I wouldn't say its worth the hassle of putting one in.

The only time I found it to actually have any benefit was with darker, high output pickups like a Seymour Duncan Hot or Custom, etc. Having the TBX on 10 can add a slight bit of edge to darker strat pickups. Of course an EQ, treble boost, or altering your amp EQ a bit could do the same thing.

ICBM · June 2023

If you've got a Fender with one, and you don't want the hassle of replacing the pot, or just want to keep it original but don't like the TBX, or even just to see what difference it makes, you can do a partial fix very easily. The way it works is that there are two independent pot sections which each operate over half the travel - the first is a 250K Log, and the second a 1M Log. They're wired in series, with a tone cap (.022uF) to ground from the first section, and also a resistor (82K) to ground from the junction of the two... it's this which strangles the tone when the pot is at the detent. If you simply cut one end of the resistor to take it out of the circuit, you then have a standard tone control from the detent down to zero (albeit with a .022uF instead of the usual Fender .05uF/.047uF), and effectively a 1.25M control above it - approaching a no-load. If you cut the wire next to the pot terminal, you can easily re-solder it if you want to put it back.

Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/99/15/00/99150096455d3e2b1b682d1fa8140549.jpg

LionAquaLooper · June 2023

ICBM said:

If you've got a Fender with one, and you don't want the hassle of replacing the pot, or just want to keep it original but don't like the TBX, or even just to see what difference it makes, you can do a partial fix very easily. The way it works is that there are two independent pot sections which each operate over half the travel - the first is a 250K Log, and the second a 1M Log. They're wired in series, with a tone cap (.022uF) to ground from the first section, and also a resistor (82K) to ground from the junction of the two... it's this which strangles the tone when the pot is at the detent. If you simply cut one end of the resistor to take it out of the circuit, you then have a standard tone control from the detent down to zero (albeit with a .022uF instead of the usual Fender .05uF/.047uF), and effectively a 1.25M control above it - approaching a no-load. If you cut the wire next to the pot terminal, you can easily re-solder it if you want to put it back.

This is insanely good info, @ICBM. ; A guru as usual

And thanks also for the reply about your own personal experience @nacnudnai . I think these are good enough reasons for me to spend my money on other strat mods that are more worthwhile.

Funkfingers · June 2023

ICBM said:

It does actually work well with an active guitar, which is what it was designed for - the Elite Strat.

The TBX also appeared in the other Fender Elite series guitar and bass models.

ICBM said:

why Fender then fitted it to passive ones, I have no idea.

The 1983/84 Elite and Standard series instruments did not sell in the quantities that Fender anticipated. This will have left them with a large stockpile of unused TBX dual-ganged pots to get rid of. Et voilà, the 1986 American Standard Stratocaster and 1987 Telecaster.

ICBM · June 2023

Funkfingers said:

The 1983/84 Elite and Standard series instruments did not sell in the quantities that Fender anticipated. This will have left them with a large stockpile of unused TBX dual-ganged pots to get rid of. Et voilà, the 1986 American Standard Stratocaster and 1987 Telecaster.

That's probably true, but by 1988 they were buying them on purpose... I've got an '88-dated TBX that came out of one of my old USA Std Strats somewhere I think.

To be fair, the TBX is not the only tone-killer in those - the pickups are the other part of the problem. I removed the TBXs, which improved things, but they still weren't right, and I was beginning to believe the popular wisdom that the bridge was the cause, so I sold them. I had a USA Std Tele with the same issue and it was only after I replaced the pickups with a Duncan Broadcaster set that I realised it was the pickups all along... that guitar sounded absolutely fantastic.

I don't really know why they keep messing around with the tone controls - after the TBX it was the Delta Tone (no load), and now the Greasebucket... none of them sound right. Have they never wondered why vintage Strats are so highly sought after?

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