Guitar & Musician Forums

Hallo to hundreds of potential new mates.
I'm looking forward to asking lots of difficult questions and perhaps passing on the odd useless nugget of information to others.
Question: I am trying to fathom out the exact workings of the tone controls on my early 80s (very beautiful) Aria Pro II RS850 electric. I gigged with it for about 15 years, but was never sure what on earth all the knobs and switches were doing. Is there anyone who had one of these or a similar model who can shed light?

Hello.

Hi and welcome to the forum.

I have no idea on your question but I am sure someone here will help.

What music are you into?

Hi Cogs,

Welcome to the forum. Go ahead and post up a pic of the control cavity and as many ways as possible to show the different wires and connections, and I'll see if I can't help.

Instructor

Hi Cogs and welcome.

hi cogs
i know what you mean ...ive only got 3 on mine ..they're all full up

have you tried googling it
[youtube]/watch?v=vwBO8fxJJYY..can you understand spanish[/youtube]

what a fantastic git is this the same as yours

i dont think this link is working
but theres stuff on youtube about it

hello and welcome to the forum

Olly wrote:Hi and welcome to the forum.

I have no idea on your question but I am sure someone here will help.

What music are you into?

Hi Olly. I could be seen as a musical tart! Rock, Jazz, Folk, Classical- anything with a chord sequence.
I was so desperate to perform that in 1966 when I was 17, I walked into a pub and just started playing. I was paid in beer. I've played in covers bands, sung solo in pubs and folk clubs, love working out chord solos of standards. I played with a band at Glastonbury a few years ago (not on the main stage!) Currently I'm in a duo with a female singer playing guitar (L'Arrivee L5 and 'weathered' 1970 FG180 Yamaha) and doing harmony vocals. We're doing local open mic sessions, but I want to get back into pub-gigging.

Hi Polyal
I'm attempting to send a photo (2nd attempt). It is a beauty, but unfortunately doesn't get the use it deserves these days, since I mostly play my acoustics. One mad idea I had was to add to the Aria a Shadow Nanomag pickup which (if the example on the Shadow website is accurate) gives a usable acoustic sound from an electric, usable enough for your average open mic session. My guitar mender was horrified when I put the idea to him!

polyal wrote:hi cogs
i know what you mean ...ive only got 3 on mine ..they're all full up

have you tried googling it
[youtube]/watch?v=vwBO8fxJJYY..can you understand spanish[/youtube]

what a fantastic git is this the same as yours

i dont think this link is working
but theres stuff on youtube about it

Hi, Instructor. Thanks for the offer. I'm attaching a photo to help. I'll try to attach more, but an earlier attempt lost me the whole draft reply.
What is shown is the spaghetti nightmare near one of the tone controls. Each tone control is a dual pot which seems to sweep the frequency range. For each tone control there is a switch on the front of the guitar which selects 3 options, but are they peaks, troughs or what?

Instructor wrote:Hi Cogs,

Welcome to the forum. Go ahead and post up a pic of the control cavity and as many ways as possible to show the different wires and connections, and I'll see if I can't help.

Instructor

Hey Cogs, welcome to the forum!
Looking forward to getting to know you better.

welcome cogs, hope you will like it here

the top switch is the pickup selector
the first knob ( nearest the strings ) is the master volume
the second 2 knobs are active tone controls ( adjust for required tone--probabley bass and treble )
the small toggle switches are the tone 'Q' controls which adjust the width of the bass and treble from
a fixed centre freqency ( probabley 200hz/2k )
use these again for variation in tone

i think this is correct but im not 100% sure
probably a good session of trial and error wouldnt go amiss

you say the toggles have 3 positions they are probably 3 fixed ( Q ) settings ( width )
you really need a circuit diagram to see how its configured

or better still send it to me and i will give it a solid 12months testing

Thanks, Polyal - that's helpful. I need to have your suggestion on view to refer to as I re-twiddle, then I might have to ask a couple of subsidiary questions, if you don't mind.
It certainly sounds good, after I puffed some air through to de-crackle the pots.
Cogs