Blend Pot on an Epi Wildkat

[JBOYD]

Okay so I'm just wondering if it's as easy as I'm hoping it is.

If I were to get the guitar, I would definitely go ahead and do this.

But anyways, if I were to put in a blend pot in place of the pickup selector switch, is it okay if there are volume pots in front of the blend pot?

The Wildkat's wiring diagram is as follows:

http://www.gibson.com/Files/schematics/Kat%20Series.PDF

or

Neck PU -> Volume -> PU selector -> Tone Pot -> (Master) Volume

Bridge PU -> Volume ----^

 

So I'm just hoping that it's okay to have pots between the pickups and the blend pot. I'd really hate to have to do any more wiring than just replacing a pot, since some of it is f-hole access only (which is not very sensible, IMO. If I were to have designed the Wildkat, I would've put a rear access behind that f-hole.)

ALSO

Is it as easy to change a volume pot to a tone pot? Isn't the only difference is that one has that capacitor to make it a tone? So all I should have to do is put a cap on the volume that I want to be a tone, right?

 

This is the way I would prefer the Wildkat to be wired.

Neck PU -> Tone pot -> Blend Pot -> Tone Pot -> (Master) Volume

Bridge PU -> Tone pot ----^

 

And is it okay to have 2 tones in a line? It has come to me that it might drain (something, volume/tone). If so, is there any idea of a pot to go in place of the master tone? I don't want to have a hole in my guitar for no good reason.

 

Thanks!

[WRGKMC]

You are going to find the blend pot redundant if you have two volume pots already.

Its going to do the same thing as turning one pickup pot down or the other.

Also running the pot midway as a blender/balance pot is going to cause allot of signal loss.

You could run a dual pot and wire one of the pots backwards. You can turn one pot up and

the other turns down at the same time.

You could also adjust how much blend you want or turn both knobs completely up or down.

 

I also wouldnt use a master volume. Its redundant and only sucks tone with humbuckers.

 

The beauty of a gibson setup is if you are using both pickups, either volume acts as a master volume - you can blend the

tone of either pickup, and if you leave say the bridge pup turned up and the neck down a few notches

you can switch from clean rythum, to crunch to cranked lead with the three way toggel.

Adding pots to make it run like a fender actually reduces its options.

 

If anything, if you mod pickups and add 4 wire pickups, adding some parallel series switches or use a blend pot that taps out

one pickup turned in one direction and taps out the other in the other direction is a great mod. I did this to a flying V and it gives

me a buttload of more tonal options with only three knobs.

[daddymack]

I also wouldnt use a master volume. Its redundant and only sucks tone with humbuckers.

The Epi Kat guitars come with the master pot. The WildKat has P90s...

[WRGKMC]

The Epi Kat guitars come with the master pot. The WildKat has P90s...

 

Single coils dont suffer from mud tone as much as Humbuckers when the volumes are turned down. Rickenbackers with their

toaster pickups are also guitars that had blend pots and Master volumes.

Those pickups were strong and could actually benifit from a little loss of high end.