questions about Pots

The subject of guitar electronics can often be a confusing for a lot of guitarist. A lot will depend on a couple things, like the impedance of your pickups and capacitance of the cable you use, or if you are the kind of guitar player who is always adjusting the volume or tone controls to different settings often throughout the course of a song.

The real Scoop is , a 250k potentiometer will give you a slightly warmer tone that a 500k pot, Higher pot resistance readings allows you to tweak more highs into your guitar, A 500k pot is going to make the guitar brighter compared to a 250k because a it attenuates more of the higher frequencies to ground.. Gibson used a 500K Ohm pot and Fender used a 250K Ohm pot for most of their single-coil pickup guitars. Fender guitars used caps from 0.1mfd to 0.05mfd. Gibson used different cap values with 0.02mfd and 0.01mfd being popular choices.

Audio taper, changes resistance at a faster rate at the extreme counterclockwise end of rotation than it does at the extreme clockwise end of rotation end. The linear taper, changes the rate of resistance at the same rate throughout the range or sweep of rotation. Which is probably why you'll more than like them better. Another type of potentiometer is a reverse audio taper. which changes resistance opposite that of the audio taper faster at the loud end of the sweep than the soft end.

The final analysis it this, it really doesn't matter which type you use. It really depends on your preference. the linear taper may better suit tour needs. I will advise whatever you decide to use try to keep all of the same, not only the same value of resistance, but the same taper it will give you the most consistent results.

joe

Joe defined it pretty clearly so my suggestion would be to experiment until you get the sound you want. Pots and caps are pretty cheap and easy to replace so experimenting is easy.

Like Joe said 500's are typical with humbuckers to bring out more highs because they tend to be more bassy and 250's with single coils to drop more highs since then tend to be more trebly.

Aren't you more likely to like the Audio taper pots as they sound like they're increasing volume at a steady rate? Using linear pots wouldn't give a steady change in volume. The ear doesn't perceive a linear change linearly, that's why they use audio taper pots.

At least, I think that's right..:lol:

Doug

Thanks for all of the help guys ... I've got a fender strat (SSS) that I'm planning on making into a Fat (HSS), so I was wondering if I'd need to, or even should consider going from 250K pots to 500K pots.

Thanks
Logan5

I would first try it without the change. If you go to 500's it may get too bright for you.

Aren't you more likely to like the Audio taper pots as they sound like they're increasing volume at a steady rate? Using linear pots wouldn't give a steady change in volume. The ear doesn't perceive a linear change linearly, that's why they use audio taper pots.

At least, I think that's right..:lol:

Doug

You are correct. Audio taper pots were designed to better match human psychoacoustic perception of sound levels, which is close to logarithmic. This is also the reason for the decibel system of audio power measurement.

Audio taper pots are what you need for volume, but linear taper is what's needed for tone control.