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Tone stack

Cathode-follower treble/bass

A two-knob stack, cathode-follower-driven — the step toward FMV.

1 amp in the archive

This is a two-control treble-and-bass tone stack fed, like its three-knob sibling, from a cathode follower. The follower's low output impedance drives the passive network, and two interacting controls set treble and bass independently — one knob short of the full FMV stack, one knob past the single tweed tone control.

It marks the point where Fender's larger tweeds outgrew a single tone knob but hadn't yet reached the three-band stack. Keeping the cathode follower means the tone network can be as lossy as good control range requires without loading down the gain stage ahead of it — the same reasoning that makes the FMV arrangement work.

For where a stage like this falls in the signal path, the guide to reading a schematic walks the coupling between stages. The plainer relatives — a single tone control and no tone stack at all — are documented alongside.

Every cathode-follower treble/bass amp

The matching circuits, with the neighbouring topology choices shown for contrast.

CircuitEraOutputTubes Phase inverterOutput-stage biasRectifier
5F4 1957–1960 26 W 12AY7, 12AX7, 12AX7, 6L6G, 6L6G, 5U4G long-tailed-pairfixed5U4G

Circuits