Blackmore MTC (Master Tone Control) WORKALIKE. Any thoughts?

Pickups, wiring schemes, switch techniques and onboard active electronics for guitars and basses
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gilmour_pugliese
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Post by gilmour_pugliese »

Hi guys... my Blackmor-ish sound search continues... After the TP-1011 preamp, now is the time of MTC, a circuit built by the guitar tech of Ritchie:

http://www.fjamods.com/Dawk.html

This circuit seems to be a LCR filter which helps to obtain the famous shaped RB sound... according to Dawk's site it "smoothes up the sound a lot, it's some kind of subtle but still very noticeable. Your sound also gets crystal clear! With the MTC your tone pots stat to work like wah wahs, turn them to zero and it sounds like a closed wah" but 325$ is a crazy price!

The RBTC made by mijfenders.com seems to be a copy of MTC:
http://www.mijfenders.com/RBTC.htm

and costs 155$... is always a too high price :slap:

Here's a silly topic where the MTC fans fight against the RTBC boys!
http://bdeeppurplefanforum.runboard.com/t13256,offset=0
:horsey:

Now, anyone knows a workalike of this circuit?
thanks :thumbsup

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Post by jimbop »

this slideshow has an x-ray of the MTC. theres also pics of a dissasembled RBTC which just contains an inductor, 2 capacitors and a resistor.


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Post by gilmour_pugliese »

thank you jimbop...

A similar circuit could be the Bill Lawrence Q Filter:
http://wildepickups.com/Q-filter.html

which costs a fraction of MTC!

Now I'm reading this:
http://guitarsbyfender.yuku.com/topic/2 ... mhvO45Ticc

and I hope to find some schematics o other ideas... :mrgreen:

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Post by jimbop »

ooh! i thought he stopped making those ages ago! thanx for that, think ill invest in one.

i have a M1 from rothstein....

http://www.guitar-mod.com/rg_passive.html

torres do a similar...

http://www.torresengineering.com/supmidandton.html

im 'trying' to learn electronics so i can play with the values on the M1. im also gonna have a try at building the aiwa pre amp that you so kindly writ out.
im a blackmore nut too and his tone has become a bit of a quest for me!

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Post by gilmour_pugliese »

HERE'S THE LAWRENCE Q-FILTER... IMHO this is pretty similar to the original MTC (Blackmore in fact uses Lawrence pickups in 70/80s)

...From B.Lawrence:

"The Q-Filter is an LCR network - a 1 henry, low Q noisefree inductor in series with a .02 micro farad cap in parallel with an 8 kilo ohm resistor. Wired like a cap to a tone pot, you can gradually decrease the impedance of the circuit but maintaining a slightly higher impedance below 1100 Hertz. Also available without the cap and the resistor to gradually decrease the impedance of the pickup.

The EQ system is the most versatile system to alter the sound of a guitar and can be used for multiple functions. The basic components are a 900mh low Q inductor in series with a capacitor and a variable resistor (tone pot). We used to ship it as a complete pre-tuned unit to replace the cap at the tone pot, limited for one basic function. However, in conjunction with different pickups in different positions, it's much more versatile when the inductor is separated from the cap, like [shipped now]. In the past, this caused severe problems when players used the wrong caps and resistors, especially when the EQ was wired to a switch only. The system must be wired to a control or you totally limit its functions, as follows:

Function A - the L Filter - the inductor, wired like a cap to the tone pot.

When you turn the pot from 10 to 0, you slowly reduce the impedance of the pickup. This is equal to taking turns off the pickup or making a sweet clean pickup out of a high power, overdrive pickup. This works fine for the neck pickup. With the control set below 3, the impedance is much too low so we block the control with a fixed 10 kilo ohm resistor or don't turn the control below 3 or 4.

Function B - the EQ Filter

On the bridge pickup, we want to maintain more lows so we block the inductor with a resistor in parallel with a cap. Now, when you turn the control to zero and you use hi-fi speakers, you can duplicate the sound of an acoustic guitar. With the controls on 3, you can get out of the bridge pickup, the #4 position sound of a Strat.

Here are some of the options you have with a volume and tone control with push pull.

Push Pull:

L to EQ1
L to EQ2
EQ1 to EQ2
EQ1 To Tone Cap only
L to Tone Cap only

EQ1 is standard crossover at 1200 Hertz
EQ2 is similar to a tone cap without choking the highs.
L reduces impedance over the total frequency.
L = 900 mh low Q humbucking inductor
EQ = L in series with .02 cap up to 1200hz high Z and above 1200 hz low Z.
EQ alone maintains too much of the lows below 1200hz
EQ1 reduces low by 60% (10K resistor over the cap)
EQ2 reduces low by 25% (25K resistor over cap)

All it takes is a different resistor to change the function."




Here are a couple of "standard" diagrams for wiring the Q-Filter:
Image
Image

Heres a nice computer-drawn version:
Image


The basic diagram:
Image

ENJOY! :popcorn:

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Post by mijfenders »

For the record the RBTC is absolutely NOT a copy of the MTC.

I'd be happy to help with creating a "work-alike" that would be most amusing indeed.
So let me know if you need any information about it or the RBTC, always happy to help.

First though you need to establish what you think the MTC actually does and is it worth making a "workalike" of something that is virtually inaudible to most!
People who buy one make HUGE claims for what it does initially then they usually go silent and stop raving about it.
This is becuase very quickly they realise it does nothing much at all.

My testing/research certainly didn't find the MTC doing the great things that people claimed.
Obviously I have an MTC so I can speak from experience. My technicains research also found very little of interst comming from the MTC>

I think you have to understand that the the MTC has a "star connection", real or imagined and mostly I think imagined.
There is a huge amount of "emotion" involved in the purchase of an MTC, becuase people think they have locatted Blackmore's very own tech( Dawk) and he's going to "handmake" them a component that is identical to the one in all of Blackmore's guitars. They beleive it all, I know I did at the time, tho not later. For a dedicated fan this is nirvanna. It's also an excelllent way to get proper done over for an expensive product that may or may not ever have been in Blackmore's guitars. The Dawk trolls will keep you right about all this twaddle.

Incidentially talking of trolls SteveStrat has been posting about your MTC idea already on another forum.
He says "Err, has anybody else spotted that the guy who designed and built this(AIWA board ) is now fishing for information about the MTC "
Steve takes a very propritory stance to all matters related to Dawk, this is his hero's product you are about to copy and thats not popular with Steve.
When you've done it, he'll tell you it's a "stolen copy, that doesn't work" and he'll make defamatopry comments about you on forums and then try to buy your product becuase it;s cheaper than an MTC!! I know coz he did all this with me before over the RBTC, depite NEVER having even owned an MTC or an RBTC at the time. Best that you know what you are getting into!!

The MTC has 4 components and a few wires.
2 Resistors, 1 Capacitor, 1 coil, 1 capacitor.
Dawk says it has "2 circuits", though how a capacitor is a "circuit" I'm not sure.
The Red/Black wires go to the capacitor ONLY and it's not connected to anything else inside.
The White Wires go to the resistors and the coil and they are not connected to anything else inside either.
The red/black wires replace the cap in your guitar with the same value cap in the MTC!
The white wires go to the volume control and this bit only operates on reduced volume.
The capacitor only comes in around mark3 on the tone pot.
That's it. It's packaged in a keyfob box filled wih resin for obvious reasons
Cost $ 350

Let's see where this project goes then.

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Post by jimbop »

so your saying the MTC is a treble bleed using a resistor, capacitor and inductor?

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Post by gilmour_pugliese »

mijfenders wrote:For the record the RBTC is absolutely NOT a copy of the MTC.

I'd be happy to help with creating a "work-alike" that would be most amusing indeed.
So let me know if you need any information about it or the RBTC, always happy to help.

First though you need to establish what you think the MTC actually does and is it worth making a "workalike" of something that is virtually inaudible to most!
People who buy one make HUGE claims for what it does initially then they usually go silent and stop raving about it.
This is becuase very quickly they realise it does nothing much at all.

My testing/research certainly didn't find the MTC doing the great things that people claimed.
Obviously I have an MTC so I can speak from experience. My technicains research also found very little of interst comming from the MTC>

I think you have to understand that the the MTC has a "star connection", real or imagined and mostly I think imagined.
There is a huge amount of "emotion" involved in the purchase of an MTC, becuase people think they have locatted Blackmore's very own tech( Dawk) and he's going to "handmake" them a component that is identical to the one in all of Blackmore's guitars. They beleive it all, I know I did at the time, tho not later. For a dedicated fan this is nirvanna. It's also an excelllent way to get proper done over for an expensive product that may or may not ever have been in Blackmore's guitars. The Dawk trolls will keep you right about all this twaddle.

Incidentially talking of trolls SteveStrat has been posting about your MTC idea already on another forum.
He says "Err, has anybody else spotted that the guy who designed and built this(AIWA board ) is now fishing for information about the MTC "
Steve takes a very propritory stance to all matters related to Dawk, this is his hero's product you are about to copy and thats not popular with Steve.
When you've done it, he'll tell you it's a "stolen copy, that doesn't work" and he'll make defamatopry comments about you on forums and then try to buy your product becuase it;s cheaper than an MTC!! I know coz he did all this with me before over the RBTC, depite NEVER having even owned an MTC or an RBTC at the time. Best that you know what you are getting into!!

The MTC has 4 components and a few wires.
2 Resistors, 1 Capacitor, 1 coil, 1 capacitor.
Dawk says it has "2 circuits", though how a capacitor is a "circuit" I'm not sure.
The Red/Black wires go to the capacitor ONLY and it's not connected to anything else inside.
The White Wires go to the resistors and the coil and they are not connected to anything else inside either.
The red/black wires replace the cap in your guitar with the same value cap in the MTC!
The white wires go to the volume control and this bit only operates on reduced volume.
The capacitor only comes in around mark3 on the tone pot.
That's it. It's packaged in a keyfob box filled wih resin for obvious reasons
Cost $ 350

Let's see where this project goes then.
thank you for the reply... I have ZERO interest to have a clone of the MTC and fight with his creator, in fact the title of this thread says "WORKALIKE"... For me, the Q Filter is a good starting point to obtain a useful circuit, so I'll experiment with this...

Please, could you link me the stevestrat post? This guy has send me to PMs for having some infos of the Aiwa preamp...

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Post by mijfenders »

gilmour_pugliese wrote:
thank you for the reply... I have ZERO interest to have a clone of the MTC and fight with his creator, in fact the title of this thread says "WORKALIKE"... For me, the Q Filter is a good starting point to obtain a useful circuit, so I'll experiment with this...

Please, could you link me the stevestrat post? This guy has send me to PMs for having some infos of the Aiwa preamp...
I sent you a PM about the SteveStrat thing and I'm not surprised he's after information about your AIWA board, he'll be producing these to sell with his "projects" no doubt. CHeck out his "guitar tech" site www.steve-strats.co.uk ...........only a short few years ago this guy was refurbishing his world famous( well in his head anyway ) "Burst" strat and fitted the pickups upsidedown/back-to-front, clearly the work of a master technician who is praised by other world famous techs! Your AIWA board will be of great interest I'm sure, so look out for the commercial pedals appearing from all over he place.

As you say clone of the MTC would be pointless, somewhat like the MTC, BUT something in that vein could be interesting, so help available if required, just ask!

It's worth saying that many of the sounds that dedicated fans and trolls attribute to the wonderful MTC are in fact nothing to do with it at all and are nothin more than Blackmore using his exceptional picking technique, which coupled with the real totosie shell picks he uses give a huge tonal variety, simple by altering the angle and attack of the pick. Blackmore is very good at this. The tortosie shell picks he uses are very thin but brick-hard and have a tone that is quite unique to them, they give exceptional definition and clarity which is not found in the plastic picks. Blackmore got the idea for these picks and their "shield shape" from Bert Weedon. These picks are quite dificult to find, though they can be purchased, in person, in Japan. I know because I bought them on a visit to Japan some years ago and they match a pick I was given by Blackmore.

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Post by GuitarlCarl »

Sounds like this thing... Tone Qube. Your lookin' at the back of an original package...picked it up Ixnay on the Ebay...
bid a dollar on a free shipping no reserve, paid 60 cents after applying ebucks... had one in the 80's it does the cocked wah ALL DAY. I broke open the resin cube on my old one, last week ( I still had it ) 1 inductor, 2 caps both .033uf, three wires coming out.

Image

see also: https://www.freestompboxes.org/viewtopic ... ne#p162190
I want it to sound like bees buzzing around in a 55 gallon drum...

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Post by jimbop »

well that looks different guitarcarl.

forgive my ignorance but with the tone wipers earthed, i would have thought that left them 'full on'?

i would love to try some of these internal guitar mods if i could get hold of a few 1H or 1.5H inductors. ive only seen smaller values.

there must be some kind of magic in these little devices. :lol:

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Post by gilmour_pugliese »

Stevestrat is no longer registered here... :hmmm:

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Post by jimbop »

hmm well that might be a good move.

dont really want the 'stevestrat vs mijf' conflict brought into this forum.

their not the best of friends elsewhere.

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Post by mijfenders »

jimbop wrote:so your saying the MTC is a treble bleed using a resistor, capacitor and inductor?
JimBop, I'm saying :-
The MTC has 4 components and a few wires.
2 Resistors, 1 Capacitor, 1 coil,
Dawk says it has "2 circuits", though how a capacitor is a "circuit" I'm not sure.
The Red/Black wires go to the capacitor ONLY and it's not connected to anything else inside.
The White Wires go to the resistors and the coil and they are not connected to anything else inside either.
The red/black wires replace the cap in your guitar with the same value cap in the MTC!
The white wires go to the volume control and this bit only operates on reduced volume.
The capacitor only comes in around mark3 on the tone pot.
That's it. It's packaged in a keyfob box filled wih resin for obvious reasons
Cost $ 350
These are the facts of the matter.

I have one, maybe you do as well, but apart from a virtually inaudible treble bleed effect, I didn't find it delivered at all.
"Night and Day" some claimed, so I think a vivid imagination at play for sure!!
I did ask Dawk if mine might have been defective, he said impossible, then when I posted clips, of what I thought was the MTC in action, I had emails from 8 other people with MTC, asking "how can I can the sound in your clips", basically because their MTC's were not doing what they expected either?!!. I was amazed and imagine the embarassment when I realised, with my clips, I could get the very same sound without the MTC and I did!!

I wanted to get a particular effect I'd heard from Blackmore, which Dawk told me was the MTC, he said "fat and creamy" It simply wasn't, if anything it was thinner and the capacitor was muffled, as they usually are!! . I wanted the bass/mid boost Blackmore appeared to have when he switched pickups from bridge to neck. It's very evident in the Blackmore's Night sound where it can be clearly heard.
I'm sure that whatever Blackmore might have inside his guitar, if anything, it's not the MTC as Dawk sells it to us.

The RBTC was aimed at getting that effect into the guitar signal which it more or less does as the clips demonstrate I think. Also the RBTC was originally developed as a 1 off, to my spec, from my ideas,to get the tone I wanted and didn't get from the MTC. It was not originally developed to be a commercial product, despite all the defamatory claims about it from Dawks Trolls.

Anyway that Dawk stuff is ALL history and largely irrelevant.............

the purpose of this thread is to discuss how to create something different, which is a great idea.....................................

The choice of component values for this type of thign is more sigificant than the "circuits" also some ability to adjust/tune/match the device to what's inside your guitar is essential. In the RBTC we provided an adjuster to help match the device to your pickups and to the amount of effect you wanted. Ideally I'd reall y like to create something which has more adjustments.

Blackmore has a Telecaster Velvet HAmmer Bridge pickup inside his stage strat now, in the middle position. He's not using it as a pickup, but he's using the coil inside it as part of his setup. Also some of his smashed guitars have shown a small device( people claim is the MTC ) but looks much more like an audi transformer. These things may be purely to do with noise reduction, or they may play some part in his tone. Blackmore's current tone has an almsot "nasal" quailty to it, perhaps a little like a wah-pedal in cocked position. The Velvet Hammer may be part of this soemwhere?

Thoughts on a postcard please!

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Post by jimbop »

mijf, thanks for that info. i cant imagine what an inductor and 2 resistors could do to the volume pot! i hav'nt the expertise to work out what that would do tone wise, could be worth experimenting though, then again maybe not.

no i dont have the MTC or any plans of purchasing one.

'the purpose of this thread is to discuss how to create something different, which is a great idea.....................................'

absolutely! that tone qube has me interested. :o

'Blackmore's current tone has an almsot "nasal" quailty to it'

think you have described that spot on. surely that must be down to more than just a passive device? maybe his onboard synth is blended in??

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Post by mijfenders »

jimbop wrote:mijf, thanks for that info. i cant imagine what an inductor and 2 resistors could do to the volume pot! i hav'nt the expertise to work out what that would do tone wise, could be worth experimenting though, then again maybe not.

no i dont have the MTC or any plans of purchasing one.

'the purpose of this thread is to discuss how to create something different, which is a great idea.....................................'

absolutely! that tone qube has me interested. :o

'Blackmore's current tone has an almsot "nasal" quailty to it'

think you have described that spot on. surely that must be down to more than just a passive device? maybe his onboard synth is blended in??
Jim, wise move, save your money the MTC is not worth buying at $350!
The synth contributes a lot to Blakmore's today sound, but still in the basic guitar sound there is something in there that's "nasal" !!
The synth he seems to use to give more sustain to notes, which it will do. I've got the GR50, same as Blackmroe uses and some of the patches give that extra top you hear him use. He will have tweaked the paches in his synth to get jsut the correct balance for him, but the basic sound is correct.
On his BN intro's he uses a patch called Quartel Brass which is found on the ROland Sound Card No.2, which is pretty rare to find these days.
It's a very distinct sound and Blackmroe certaily uses it. For his other blends I seems to use various "brass" patches.

It's also worth noting that the synth pickup can also operate as an analog pickup giving him the potential to feed a signal to something else, as well as the syth. For a while Boss produced a couple of GK pedals which worked with this pickup. The GK Wave Pedal has various wave patches and agan these sound not unlike som eof the high blens in Blackmore's sound. He could easily be using one of these tucked away out of sight per usual!! Equally as the GK can be connected to the GI20 a pitch to midi convertor then he could be driving ANY midi device, from a hardare synth to something on a computer behind the scenes. So it's tricky. The MTC if it's involved at all is not contributing much to it at all I don't think.

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Post by RnFR »

Jeezus h. Christ on a stick. what a load of horseshit drama over four passive components. the pure writhing fury of fanboys trying to get "the tone" will never cease to amaze the hell out of me.

you know you can of course tune the cap to whatever decent sized inductor you have, right? you should be able to work around whatever values you find that are close enough. try the little transformers the size of the ones used in octavias. you could probably find something close that would work.
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Post by Baretta »

Can we still buy RBTC?
In spite of requesting a quote several times from the web site, they never replied back at all so far.
I'm about to give up.

If the RBTC cannot be a choice anymore, what the alternative should be as WORKALIKE?
Q-Filter? Rothstein? Torres? or the great MTC???
Any opinion?

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Post by mojah63 »

RnFR wrote:Jeezus h. Christ on a stick. what a load of horseshit drama over four passive components. the pure writhing fury of fanboys trying to get "the tone" will never cease to amaze the hell out of me.

you know you can of course tune the cap to whatever decent sized inductor you have, right? you should be able to work around whatever values you find that are close enough. try the little transformers the size of the ones used in octavias. you could probably find something close that would work.


:lol:

Mouser has those transformers....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RLC_circuit

Scroll down to other configurations see figure 8 try tuning it to the resonant frequency
of your pickup.

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Post by joebonni »

Its so very interesting how a passive tone control can cause so many problems
I have used the Torres tone control for sometime now and I really like it but
not cause it was cheaper........... the fact that I could build it myself ........and
Jimbop here told me to disconnect one side of it and I did that and you get a very similar
type sound but it also give me a jazz/blues type sound which is what I really wanted
so I agree with Clark its a workalike not a copy of anything really ..........but this
happened to me I looked at SteveStrats strat wiring for the MTC and I wired it
Backwards and for the life of me I could not figure it out till today ..................

So thanks for that it will change the whole sound of my guitar !!!!!!!!!!!


joe bonni

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