Thunder III wiring oddity.

Hey all. My newly aquired Thunder III is a bit weird. The passive tone pot is acting as a volume control which certainly isn't what I've found on other Thunders (and superheadlesses)
Heres a diagram of what is different on mine compared to the wiring diagram on the .info site (which I can't copy to paste in here unfortunately)

Is this whats causing the problem? How can I fix the capacitor problem?

Cheers for any help!


And heres a pic of the actual circuit. You can just about see the black wire coming from the bottom connector of the pot - there's no capacitor, - unless it's inside the sleeve?

Without a capacitor, you have another volume pot.

Thanks Colt. Does anyone have a photo of the wiring inside their Thunder II or III so I can see how it's wired in?

EDIT: Just looked inside my superheadless after seeing on .info that they have the same wiring and it looks like the capacitor was just replaced with the black wire and the brown wire sent straight from the pot to the pcb - whether this was done in error at Matsumoku (surely not!) or later on for some reason I don't know. I would still appreciate a pic of some Thunder III wiring though just to confirm that I'm right before I go messing around in the gizzards!

Chaypup, you can save the image from the .info site to your machine and then upload to the forums, I have just stopped hotlinking because it sucks bandwidth, and that is what is expensive!

I have a thunder III, but it is passive. My wiring is around here somewhere, but I am not sure it will be of any use...

I tried that DreamRaven, but my Mac says it doesn't recognise the file format (but won't say what it is) I tried copying the pic into another program but only a small section copied. Thanks for the offer, but I think the passive one would be different! Cheers!

My luck as well chaypup.

It is only downloading a smaller 200x200 .jpg file of the picture and not the entire diagram. I tried with all 3 of them.

Looking through a small fragment of Thorn's pages, I found that quite a lot of the imagery is sliced up and presented in sections. This used to be de riguer when broadband was less available. It meant that you got many bits slowly coming in, giving you something to look at whilst waiting. It may also have been done for exactly the reason that you are experiencing, if it is in bits it is more difficult to take off the site.

Give me the address of the page, as a link and I can take a look, it will also serve a better purpose for anyone else viewing this thread, they can click directly through to that diagram from here without having to search through the .info site, and maybe end up in the wrong place. That is what hypertext links were designed for!

Just get a snipping tool. Naughty ..... but nice

You are right, my wiring photo would have been useless! Mine is a 6 string, not a bass

Deplorable behaviour mr bjb

A snipping tool...?? Is that sort-of what I used to use on the lambs and calves come tailing/docking? Or is that like a programme I have called "Grab" which takes screen shots?

Naughty because?? Copyright thing? Thinking on that; is watermarking the pix a good idea or not?? I'm not real big on people grabbing anything on the info site to use on eBay if they haven't asked or otherwise cleared it with the site admin... But I suppose with a site like this we have no option to let that happen?

Thanks Bowenjaybee! So, when I wire the capacitor from nubbin no.3 on the passive tone pot, can I solder the other end to anywhere on the underside of the pot like the black wire is at the moment or is there a connector I can't see?

chaypup wrote:So, when I wire the capacitor from nubbin no.3 on the passive tone pot, can I solder the other end to anywhere on the underside of the pot like the black wire is at the moment or is there a connector I can't see?

Yep just solder one end of the cap to the pots third tab and the other end anywhere on the back of the pot.

corsair wrote:A snipping tool...?? Is that sort-of what I used to use on the lambs and calves come tailing/docking? Or is that like a programme I have called "Grab" which takes screen shots?

Naughty because?? Copyright thing? Thinking on that; is watermarking the pix a good idea or not?? I'm not real big on people grabbing anything on the info site to use on eBay if they haven't asked or otherwise cleared it with the site admin... But I suppose with a site like this we have no option to let that happen?

When it comes to internet material I’m not too concerned about copyright. “Grab” was created by Apple, and Windows 7 has “Snipping tool” built in, an invitation from the big boys for anybody to copy what they want.

One of the reasons Thorn closed the Westone info site was because he was pissed at people copying his work. I respected that and that’s why I’ve never posted any images from his site on these forums before. He worked bloody hard to get the information available to the world, but did he own the rights to the Westone logo? The magazine scans? or the catalogues? No.

The floodgates are now open and the Westone info material now belongs to anybody who has the knowledge to grab it to a hard drive.

This is where those dragons are...

Because Mr smith and Mr Wesson invented the colt 45, does that mean you have free reign to shoot someone in cold blood?

I am guessing you have not had something you have created taken and used without permission and then used for profit.

Yes, some of the things on Thorn's site he didn't own, but most of the time he did credit his sources...

As I have said, this argument echos around the internet 24hr a day, and no one has the answer

corsair wrote:Naughty because?? Copyright thing? Thinking on that; is watermarking the pix a good idea or not?? I'm not real big on people grabbing anything on the info site to use on eBay if they haven't asked or otherwise cleared it with the site admin... But I suppose with a site like this we have no option to let that happen?

Yes, there is a 'right to copy' issue, because a possibly unauthorised copy has been produced, and once a work has had that happen to it, it is difficult to gain that control back. Yes, the point of 'if you dint want that to happen, you should have kept it off the tinterweb'. Following that argument takes you to a country populated by dragons, so I am keeping away from it.

On the watermarking issue, again, it tells people where the image came from and makes people think twice. When I make more amends to the site I will place a statement saying, if you want watermark free images to just get in contact and ask...

Too late now.

DreamRaven wrote:

Because Mr smith and Mr Wesson invented the colt 45, does that mean you have free reign to shoot someone in cold blood?

I'm pretty sure it was Mr. Colt. (Samuel).

If anyone else runs into this problem of "clipping", "snipping" an image from the old Info site in order to display it in a post here, please note that we have an archived copy of David Blair's original site located on this server at: Archive
You may "hot link" to these images without creating bandwidth problems since everything is located in one place.

.....and fixed! Have now soldered in a new capacitor, passive tone now works as it should - woot!

Barry wrote:If anyone else runs into this problem of "clipping", "snipping" an image from the old Info site in order to display it in a post here, please note that we have an archived copy of David Blair's original site located on this server at: Archive
You may "hot link" to these images without creating bandwidth problems since everything is located in one place.