Who's playing Baritone guitar?

[djaaz]

Hi all, i'm one not so proud member of the club "back to pedal building and hence back here". Most of you who were there almost 10 years ago won't remember me. So hi again from France.
One of the reason i got pulled back to the hobby is that i was struggling to make a lot of my pedals work for Baritone.
Now, the freqency range of a Baritone (i play mine in Drop A tuning) is not that far off a standard guitar with lowest string around 50hz but the overall timbre of the instrument is darker & rounder which does not always work with dirt pedal that makes it often even more darker.
So if any of you out there have suggestions of pedals or mods to known circuit, i'll be happy to hear them.

[zombie_rock123]

Howdy and welcome back!

The only circuit I know specifically was aimed at down tuned/baritone guitars is the DOD Digitech Boneshaker, so much so that some standard tuning users didn't like it. There's no PCB I know of but there's a vero layout if you're not fearful of offboard wiring - http://dirtboxlayouts.blogspot.com/2019/06/dod-black-arts-boneshaker.html?m=1#comment-form

[Tremster]

http://effectslayouts.com/product/hot-bod/
I love mine!

Edit: I used a 500k gain pot.

[mauman]

Welcome back!

You pose an interesting problem.  Bass pedals aside, you should be able to adapt a standard guitar pedal that you like, to sound good on a baritone guitar.  I think the process might go like this.  Standard guitar tuning is E2 to E4 on the open strings, plus another octave-up to E5 on the 12th fret 1st string.  If you play drop A baritone tuning, that's A1 to A3 open, up to A4 on the 12th fret.  Drop A tuning is a perfect 5th below standard guitar tuning.  So if you tweak all the filter components of a pedal to reduce their frequency by a perfect fifth, that should bring the pedal's response into the same relationship with baritone tuning as the original pedal had with standard tuning. 

That's just the idea, I haven't tried it yet but will work up an example to see if it's practical, and let you know.  In addition, you may have to consider other things like LFO rates for modulation effects, but that's probably best tweaked by ear anyway.  This process should be adaptable to other baritone tunings as well (drop B, drop C, etc).

[djaaz]

Thanks guys,

Mauman, that much is "easy" enough. However, i think there is a bit more to do on the treble side and that's where my frenglish hit a limit, but if you bear with me i'll try to explain what i mean, sorry if i'm being obvious there, it's just a way to go beyond the language limitation.

Any note on your guitar will produce a sound that is not limited to the dominant frequency but includes the harmonic content (mostly fifth & octave up & down), i call that the timbre.
The same note played on a baritone and a standard guitar will sound more bassy, muddy, flabby, rounder, darker on the baritone. With cleanish sound that is not a problem at all, with heavy gain and playing power chord it's sort of ok as well, but anyting in between feels like it could be better.
Note that slamming the front of an amp that can take it makes a lot of difference. So i'm putting the blame on the pedals with no certainty.
When hitting a dirt pedal, i feel the lack of clarity rather than the lack of bass.
Now being old enough to know that my ears are not what they used to be, i'm always wondering if others out there hears the same thing i do.
And if so, what they might have done to mitigate it.

[djaaz]

Welcome back!

You pose an interesting problem.  Bass pedals aside, you should be able to adapt a standard guitar pedal that you like, to sound good on a baritone guitar.  I think the process might go like this.  Standard guitar tuning is E2 to E4 on the open strings, plus another octave-up to E5 on the 12th fret 1st string.  If you play drop A baritone tuning, that's A1 to A3 open, up to A4 on the 12th fret.  Drop A tuning is a perfect 5th below standard guitar tuning.  So if you tweak all the filter components of a pedal to reduce their frequency by a perfect fifth, that should bring the pedal's response into the same relationship with baritone tuning as the original pedal had with standard tuning. 

That's just the idea, I haven't tried it yet but will work up an example to see if it's practical, and let you know.  In addition, you may have to consider other things like LFO rates for modulation effects, but that's probably best tweaked by ear anyway.  This process should be adaptable to other baritone tunings as well (drop B, drop C, etc).

Thanks again mauman, i just built a triumvirate just to exhaust myself with the dozen trimmers and experiment exactly what you suggest.

[mauman]

You're right, this doesn't address any issues of clarity, flabbiness, bassiness, etc. I'll leave that to those of you with better ears than mine!  But if you're interested, as an example here are the mods I would suggest to adjust a stock Tube Screamer's filters for drop-A baritone guitar.   You'll only need to replace 4 caps.  I don't have a baritone so I haven't tried it.  If you try it and like the results, I'll add another post (probably TL;DR) to run thru the process I used, hopefully this idea will be useful for other pedal experiments for baritone.

Using the Electrosmash TS schematic and analysis as a reference:  https://www.electrosmash.com/tube-screamer-analysis

(Input and output filters are fine as-is, they're HPF at 16 Hz and <2 Hz respectively.)

• Feedback loop HPF = C3 + R4, move 720 Hz to 498 Hz by changing C3 from 47n to 68n.
• Feedback loop LPF = C4 + R6 + 500k pot, at max gain move 5.6 kHz to 3.6 kHz by changing C4 from 51p to 80p (use a 47p and a 33p in parallel).  LPF effect is reduced as you reduce gain, and C4 value becomes less relevant, the maximum cut is at full gain.
• Main LPF = C5 + R7, move 723 Hz to 482 Hz by changing C5 from 220n to 330n.
• Tone control: For pot clockwise, move 3.2 kHz cutoff to 2.2 kHz by changing C6 from 220n to 330n. The rest of the tone pot range also drops a perfect 5th by changing C6 and C5 to 330n.

[jwin615]

As a baritone convert myself, I'll throw my hat in.
Not knowing what style you play or what tone your chasing, some or none of this may apply.
There are a few things to consider
1) proper string tension. If flabby and muddy are an issue, maybe reevaluate your strings. I love stringjoy because they have a great tension calculator and you can get custom sets for the same price as normal sets. They're also local so I generally get them delivered next day. Not sure if they're an option in France. Getting the right set makes a big difference.  I use a similar turning, AEADEA which is drop dadgad.
2) pickups and pickup height. Once you are 5 frets up the neck, there's not much difference in the physics of a baritone guitar and a normal scale, aside from string tension and the very important resonance aspect. A longer neck should have a lower resonance. That aside, if dark and muddy are an issue, consider raising your pickups. If you are still having issues, a pickup swap may be in order. My Jericho that I bought used had a JB with a cover in the bridge that was unbearably dark and muddy regardless of position. It could do sludge and that is all. Recently swapped to a black winter in the bridge and way happier. Both baris have sentient neck pickups which I very much like. Comparing bridge pups, the black winter is tighter and snappier than the nazgul with the nazgul being a little brighter, but that guitar is brighter.
3)cutting bass. Unless your playing doom/sludge, I find that cutting some bass is absolutely necessary. Especially with the Jericho which is a walnut body, I use drastically different eq settings than a 24 in scale. Often cutting a great deal of lows. Cutting subsonic can be helpful as well. A few items to consider on that side of the pond:
https://guitar-electronics.eu/en_US/p/SUBSONIC-FILTER-PCB/308
https://guitar-electronics.eu/en_US/p/HIGH-PASS-FILTER-HPF-PCB/326

Lastly, cables. Low cap cables are a must. They don't have to be $100+ cables though. I'm not sure what suppliers are available in the EU but I'm sure there are plenty of options. Any time I hear someone posting about dark/muddy/wet blanket tone, I have to wonder about their cables. The capacitance of the cable and impedance of the guitar can create a low pass filter that just kills the tone. Call it tone suck or whatever. But it's real and detrimental. If you can build pedals, you can build cables. You may be very aware of this or it may be a new concept.
Here's a site explaining a bit in metric units, go about half way down the page for the cap test.
https://en.customboards.fi/pages/7-testing-cables-with-a-multimeter
Note, a cheap multimeter isn't great at this but will at least allow you to compare cables of similar length. I like the bulk cable from btpa.com
Also, I've had good cables go bad in this regard. I'm not sure how, maybe a breakdown in the insulation or something but a higher end cable that I used for years brokes down and ended up having a huge cap reading. It was so bad I thought my new guitar had a wiring issue.

In regards to your original question on pedals, I haven't found that bassifying circuits has been necessary. A simple rc filter is only capable of 6db per octave. We're already dealing with an abundance of low end here, so a mild cut of a few db isn't going to be that effective. I have had a couple of OD circuits that seemed to roll off more, choking the low end aggressively (approaching 9+dBish) and those circuits could be tweaked.  But generally, paying attention to input and output caps as well as any filters around ICs, and you can adjust pretty easily. But again, I'd recommend cutting those subsonic out early in the chain to clean up any harmonic content created from them. There's not much useful content below ~120hz some would say as high as 220. Nothing is further gained when you start building harmonics of those long wavelengths. We aren't *hearing* 50hz, were feeling it. We're hearing the overtones and harmonics both natural and generated. Our amps and speakers don't like trying to reproduce it, it eats up headroom and auditory space of other instruments .It's undefined mush, unless that's what your into...
having a HPF in the effects loop can be beneficial as well, depending on the amp but there's really no reason to be sending 50hz to a tube power amp. Experiment, see what works. Check your cables. Rock on.

[djaaz]

Thanks for that.

I realize reading you how unclear i was. My tuning is closer to standard as i drop one tone on the low string and sometime the "B" string one tone down to A. my bridge pickup is a SH4. Maybe some room to experiment there. Thank you for the tip.
I'm quite happy with the sound of my baritone getting directly into an amp. The SLO 100 clone i built is working very well. Into a fender princeton reverb, i have obviously something very different that still works.

If i push either the amp with a clean boost such as a LBP=1. Still ok.

Now if i want to play at bedroom level with a pedalboard into a katana, here comes the lack of clarity that i don't have with standard tuned guitar. i'm very careful about the cables up to the first buffer in the board which is a buffered bypass klon.

I'll try and record some demo soon.

[GrindCustoms]

This is an interesting subject! I haven't ventured yet into Baritones and i don't really know why, i've been playing in tunings lower than B for years and currently very fond of Drop G on my 25.5" 7 String but poor girl is taking a beating trying to hold those tuning and tension...

I sure do not have the same tone timbre or frequency range as a baritone even at those lower tunings but what jwin15 brings up is something i had to deal with and understand how to counter balance throughout the years.

Cables are indeed a huge factor on getting that thick signal to the amp and i've couple years ago upgraded my whole cabling with LavaCables and Evidence cables. I've also been running a buffer in front of my signal chain forever to keep things in check and i can't recall the exact values as we speak but i use a Klone type buffer and it's tweaked to be a tad brighter.

Lastly are the pickups, the best results i always got is with low to medium output pickups, nothing about 15K, i play Grindcore, TechDeath and other stuff like that but mostly fast paced, note packed stuff so clarity and definition are mandatory otherwise nothing goes through. One of my favorite 6 strings is a TVMaster with a TVJones Hot Rod, guitar have always been tuned in Drop B and it just slays! Also, if i had to choose, all my low tuned guitars would have a Maple Neck, the added snappiness compare to ebony or rosewood is significant in the overall attack and dynamic to picking hand response.

[Aleph Null]

I have a baritone telecaster with active electronics. It's not a dark guitar, but the lower range does mean I have to manage low frequencies carefully. The solution for me was installing an active two-band eq, specifically EMG's BTC for bass. I can boost or cut lows at the source before I hit any pedals. Taking this approach, I haven't felt the need to modify any pedals or make a baritone specific rig.

If you don't want to go the active route, you could try something like an RC boost or Madbeans FireAxe at the front of your chain. You'd probably had to experiment with capacitor values in the EQ section to get the cutoff frequencies you need.