Unlike the interior of your first car, the vinyl on this 172 still looks sharp.
Höfner also used this wiring on a lot of their early solidbody electric guitars, like the famous model 172. These models were covered in colorful vinyl rather than receiving a paint job. The demand for electric guitars was very high in the ’60s, and a paint job was very time-consuming and expensive, so this method was a welcome alternative to cut costs and save time. The vinyl is still an eye-catcher today.
My first real electric guitar was such a Höfner, a later model without the control plate, but still covered in gorgeous red vinyl. Eventually, I removed the vinyl and put some dilettantish paint job on it. When I think about it today, I feel like a lemon.
Frank Meyers recently wrote a cool column about the Höfner company and its history, which appeared in PG’s March 2023 issue, so if you want to find out more about them, please check it out.
So, let’s have a look at the control plate and its very special wiring. It might be considered weird from today’s perspective, but at the time, this wiring was state of the art. The control plate itself and the fancy “tea cup” knobs are still available today—it is called HA2B with an additional letter indicating the color of the plastic control plate, e.g. B (black), C (cream), T (tortoise), and so on.
Photo 2
Photo courtesy of L’instrumenterie, Baptiste Zermati, Villeurbanne, France (https://linstrumenterie.com)
This wiring is designed for a guitar with two pickups and sports an individual on/off switch and volume control for each, plus a rhythm/solo switch, resulting in a total of two pots and three switches. Please note that the plate is labeled in English and not in German, which clearly shows that Höfner was targeting the international market while still selling large quantities inside Germany.
Here is a short summary of what the individual controls are doing, using Photo 2 as our reference:
• neck pickup volume pot
• solo = full output signal / rhythm = output attenuated to about 70 percent
• bass off = bridge pickup on / bass on = bridge pickup off + treble filter
• treble off = neck pickup on / treble on = neck pickup off + bass filter
• bridge pickup volume pot
The way the bass and treble switches are wired up is the real weird part. Back in the day, a neck pickup was often referred to as the bass pickup and the bridge pickup the treble pickup. In this case, the bass switch is for the treble pickup and vice versa. So when the bass switch is off, the bridge pickup is on; when it’s on, the bridge pickup is off. And when the treble switch is off, the neck pickup is on; when it’s on, the neck pickup is off.
This results in the following: When both switches are in the off position, both pickups are engaged (in parallel), and when both switches are in the on position, both pickups are disabled, which works like a kill switch to mute the whole guitar.
This is, for sure, one of the fanciest guitar wirings ever. But believe me, compared to some wirings that were used in the electric guitars of the Musima company in the former GDR, this one here is as harmless as can be.
"There is no law against experimenting with the values of the caps and resistors to tweak the tone to your personal preferences."
Let’s have a look what’s under the hood:
2 x 250k audio pots
3 x DPDT slide switches
1 x 270k + 1 x 100k resistors for the solo/rhythm switch
1 x 0.01 uF treble cap
1 x 0.1 uF bass cap + 1 x 8.2k resistor
You can use any cap and resistor you want. I like to use small film caps and 1/4-watt metal film resistors. It’s nice working with these parts because they are small enough to fit the control plate.
The wiring works as follows:
Solo/rhythm switch: While the solo position has full signal output, the rhythm position engages two resistors to reduce the output to approximately 70 percent by bleeding some signal to ground.
Bass switch: In the on position, the bass capacitor and the resistor filters some highs off to ground.
Treble switch: In the on position, the treble capacitor filters some bass off to ground.
So, here we go for the wiring:
Fig. 1
Illustration courtesy of SINGLECOIL (www.singlecoil.com)
This is the real deal circuit that Höfner used in the early ’60s. The modern overhauled wiring of the HA2B circuit looks very similar, but uses a 0.1 uF treble cap and has no additional resistor in-line with the bass cap. To my ears, the vintage version sounds better, but this is a matter of taste and there is no law against experimenting with the values of the caps and resistors to tweak the tone to your personal preferences.
I would like to thank Baptiste Zermati from the L’instrumenterie company in France for the photos of the vintage Höfner 172—a big shoutout to him.
That’s it! Next month, we will talk about the brand new PRS “Dead Spec” Silver Sky wiring for John Mayer and how you can adopt this for your own Stratocaster, so stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!
Bryan’s abstract representation of low-end compression.
Keeping a Low Profile
Is it just me? It seems like every time I listen to new music (especially indie, alt-rock, hip-hop, and pop), one thing I can always expect is a massive and unwelcome deviation of the low end from artist to artist—even within the same genre! Some songs have a wonderfully inspired low end that invites the listener to turn it up and get inside the mix, while others are so far off the low-end chart that I need to get out my Richter scale to measure single-digit bass frequencies while driving to AutoZone to replace every nut, bolt, and washer that rattled off my car during the song. Those mixes feel less like a song and more like an assault by a renegade 808-tuned sub-bass. Personally, I think low-end information should be long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to keep it interesting.
With that in mind, let me offer some ways that you can tighten up your bottom end and glue your mix together so everything is in balance instead of a “lead kick drum” mix. The Dojo is now open.
So Happy Together
Because the kick drum and bass guitar are such critical components of the rhythm section, compressing the kick drum and bass guitar together on a dedicated bus is a common and effective technique in audio production that substantially contributes to a tighter and more cohesive low-end foundation in a mix. You’ll know from reading my past articles that nothing triggers compression like low frequencies, so it makes perfect sense to explore and route low-end elements into one compressor and spare the other instruments in your song from having their dynamic range suffer because the compressor is reacting to the bass frequencies. When applied to both the kick drum and bass guitar, compression helps to even out the fluctuations in volume, ensuring a more consistent and controlled low end. This is particularly beneficial in genres like rock, pop, hip-hop, R&B, and electronic music, where a steady and powerful low end is often desired.
Picking a Foundation
What is important for you to decide is which one of the two will be on the bottom and serve as a foundation for the other. That ranges by genre, and you should be aware of how you want to approach that relationship. For example, is the fundamental frequency of the kick drum lower than the lowest bass note played in the song, or vice versa? Adjust accordingly. Remember that the kick drum and bass guitar often share similar frequency ranges, and their frequencies will likely clash or compete for space in the mix until you make this decision. If the kick drum “role” in your song is fixed (like an acoustic kick drum) and has a stable fundamental low-end frequency, carve a little bit of that same frequency out of your bass instruments to reduce “masking”—and they’ll both have more clarity.
Mutually Beneficial
One benefit of using a shared compressor is that it’ll ensure that the low frequencies will remain controllable, and reduce any sudden jumps between different sections of a song, such as verses and choruses.
“I think low-end information should be long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to keep it interesting.”
Another plus is that compressing the kick and the bass instruments together can emphasize the transient characteristics of both. By adjusting the attack and release settings on the compressor, you can enhance the initial attack of the kick drum and the pluck or pick attack of the bass guitar. This results in a more pronounced and impactful low end, adding punch and definition. And by bringing these two elements together, you allow them to work in tandem rather than independently.
In genres like dance music and hip-hop, where a consistent and powerful low-end energy is crucial, compressing the kick and bass together will maintain a steady foundation throughout the track. In addition to this, remember that you can also side-chain the output of the kick drum to a key-inserted compressor on the bass track for some good old bass pumping.
Simplify the Process
Compressing the kick and bass guitar together will help you streamline your mixing process and reduce the need for individual processing of each element. Sure, you’ll still want some individual instrument processing and fine-tuning (EQ, etc.), but compressing them together later will give you a solid starting point for mixing the rest of the instruments in the song.
Until next time, namaste.
Brought to you by Focusrite.
Bryan’s MIDI-based ’board.
For guitarists, MIDI was a bit of a useless concept—something the synth player in your band endlessly yammered about while you plugged in your amp and pedalboard and set up for the gig. Well, tighten up your belts, the Dojo is now open.
The Paradigm Changes
Developed by a consortium of musical heavyweights, including MIDI’s progenitor Dave Smith (Sequential Circuits), Ikutaro Kakehashi (Roland Corporation), and engineer Tom Oberheim, MIDI enables synths and drum machines from various makers to “talk” to one another using a standardized “language” over a 5-pin cable. The original MIDI instruments included Roland’s TR909 and Jupiter-6, and Smith’s own Prophet 600. Today, MIDI can be carried over USB, 3.5 mm, and 1/4" TRS cables, as well as Bluetooth. It’s also something that more and more pedal makers are taking advantage of en masse. Many months ago with the help of my friends at XAct Tone Solutions here in Nashville, I finally wired up a MIDI-based pedalboard (Photo 1). Why would I ever go down this rabbit hole?
“Until very recently, guitar-oriented manufacturers never took advantage or expanded on MIDI possibilities.”
For several huge reasons: It gives me greater control over all of a given pedal’s obvious (and hidden) parameters that I can adjust simultaneously using expression pedal(s); the ability to toggle, latch, or tap tempo for many pedals at once; to create, save, and adjust wildly divergent preset parameters on the fly (using CC and PC messages); and organize song lists and set lists, for starters.
While this is possible with multi-effects pedals from Line 6, Fender, Neural DSP, Boss, Kemper, etc., I often find that I don’t like all the sounds bundled within these units. I may not like certain types of amp models, overdrives, choruses, reverbs, fuzz, and delay offerings from one maker, and prefer the algorithms of another brand entirely. With more and more pedal manufacturers embracing MIDI, we’re much closer to a “having our cake and eating it too” scenario.
I can further use my MIDI-enabled pedals with instruments beyond keyboards, drum machines, samplers, and other MIDI controllers (this may be the subject of a future Dojo). But for now, I want to get your creativity fully charged, and take you down another rabbit hole I stumbled into!
Becoming a Convert
Let me give you one of my new favorite “effects” I’ve been exploring. This involves using any plugin or software that will convert audio to MIDI. Certain DAWs (Ableton, Pro Tools, etc.) already have the ability to convert an audio file to MIDI. If your DAW does not, you can use Melodyne and pitch-based plugins, or free ones specifically made for this like NeuralNote or Basic Pitch, which were developed by Spotify.
Try This
Now let’s “break” the plugin. Either use a prerecorded audio track (guitars, vocals, bass, keys, or even ambient field recordings), or grab your guitar and record something with all the effects you would normally use. Delays are particularly fun to have here since they repeat pitches already played! Now convert this audio track to MIDI. In Pro Tools, right-click on the audio file and select “Copy Audio as MIDI.” I tried this using a fuzzed-out solo I played on a recent record I produced.
Next, create an instrument track and instantiate a soft synth of your choice (I’ve used Arturia’s Jup-8 with one of my tweaked presets). Now paste (Cmd or Ctrl+V) the MIDI-ized audio onto the instrument track. Based on your sensitivity settings, you should have all kinds of crazy extraneous notes in various octaves.
From here, solo the instrument track with your new MIDI, and let your imagination loose! Pay attention to the parts of your original audio track that were accurately “preserved” and what parts were not. You can now play with velocity, duration, quantization, and transposition for any and all notes. For example, I chose to isolate notes that were originally part of the delay and then adjusted them to match the underlying implied chords I soloed over—thus turning my guitar’s delay into a MIDI chord accompaniment for my solo!
I hope you canceled your dinner plans. Blessings, and until next time, Namaste.
