black Ice capacitor

[lesismore14]

I recently stumbled upon the Black Ice Overdrive capacitor. Check it out here at <a href="http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electronics,_pickups/Components:_Black_Ice_overdrive.html">StewMac:Black Ice</a>
I was going to install a TBX tone control as a master tone control, and use another tone pot for the black Ice (I guess you install it just like you would a standard capacitor). I just wanted to see if anyone had any experience with the Black Ice capacitor, and could give me some feedback on it, I have never heard it in action, and I would much rather hear it, or hear more about it (stewmac doesn't give a very detailed description).


Please contact me if you know anything about this subject. Thanks.

[Grambo]

I've worked on several Electic guitars and everyone I'v come across has had a ' Treble cut ' tone control.
Different size capacitors will give a different range of tone control
Normally as you turn the tone pot towards bass more and more treble frequencies are shorted to ground - So yes I think the ' black ice ' would be connected the same way - Fascinating ?
Please let me know how you get on

[Grambo]

I have earlier this year repaired a Squier and an Encore,
On both occasions both the tone controls used the same capacitor - the cap is cleverly Wired to both tone pots - however only one tone control is active at any time depending on the position of the pick up selector switch

[PonyOne]

i just stumbled upon this one...

I put the Black Ice in the tone pot of my Epi SG a good 5 years ago. I was, at the time, intrigued with onboard electronics, and for $20 or whatever it was I figured "why not?"

I soldered it up when i gutted the guitar; Epi's stock electronics suck, the pots are total junk... the pickups on that particular guitar were pretty bad too, so I replaced the bridge with a Seymour Duncan Buckshot, which is a low-cost, simple humbucker that is designed for higher gain applications.

I combined the Buckshot with a new 500k volume pot and then, as instructed, a 250k tone pot, with the Black Ice module soldered in place of a capacitor.

The results? The thing definitely worked, but, it was about as muddy as you could get. Very dull, very low-definition. It's a cool idea, and I don't know, maybe the pickup itself was a bad choice for the project... plus, the guitar is junk but even still, the thing is just... mud. The highs are absent, the mid is a bit too much, and the gain, while present, is IMHO pretty negligable; amps have gain knobs and companies make distortion pedals for a reason...

My advice would be to just get yourself a couple 1meg pots; I dropped some in my Strat and my Kramer, and they really opened the things up, and exposed dynamics in the pickups I didn't know existed. On the Strat I use a P90 in the bridge, and stock singles in the mid and neck, then run it through a stock 5-way, 1 meg volume, 1 meg tone, and then the last pot in he chain is a 250k to preserve some of the vintage vibe. It sounds pretty sweet, and depending on the settings, the P90 can come off totally clean, can quack like a duck or bite like a German Shepard.