putting a resitor in my guitar?

[Michael Glines]

hello, thank you for your interest!  i'm going to wire a new pickup into my guitar, and i need some advice on resistance.

 

i have a hagstrom deluxe-f. here's how it came stock:

2 covered humbuckers

1 volume pot

1 tone pot

1 three-way selector switch

1 coil tap switch

i run it through a mesa boogie lonestar 2x12 and a ton of analog pedals.

i'm about to record another album, and because i want a relatively noise-free signal, i ordered an alumitone humbucker for the neck position. i can't afford one for the bridge right now, and i seldom use bridge position anyway.

i've read that the alumitone requires a 250 pot, and i'm assuming that my one volume pot is 500k. i don't know about the tone pot.

i'm considering replacing the volume pot with a 250k pot so it works with the alumitone. however, it seems that this could adversely affect the signal of my bridge humbucker, so i though of putting a 250k resistor in series between the bridge humbucker and the volume to compensate.

 

1. will this work?

2. is there a better way to wire the alumitone in while maintaining use of my bridge pickup?

3. do i also need to change my tone pot?

 

thanks!!!!!!

 

-michael

[intothevoid]

Short answer is that it won't work.

If you put a 250k resistor in there instead of having a range of 0 - 500k on the pot as it should be you are going to have a range of 250k - 500k. This will mean that you won't be able to get full volume.

Honestly I think you should just replace the pot. I don't see that going to a higher resistance would affect the bridge pickup all that much.

[guitarcapo]

I never understood replacing the pot. Just turn the volume knob down slightly. The difference between the pot creating 500K and 250K rsistance to the grounded signal is just a slight touch down on the volume knob.

 

The way a volume pot works is that it sends the signal to ground from the pickup instead of allowing it to hit the amp. When a 500k pot is maxed out the resistance of that signal going to ground is 500K. More of the signal is hitting the amp than when using a maxed out 250K pot. With a 250K pot, when the pot is maxed out, the amount of signal being bled off is slightly greater because theres only 250K resistance to ground.

But if you turn a 500K pot ever so slightly "down"....you create THE SAME 250K being bled to ground.

Placing a 250K volume pot in place of a 500K pot is sort of like modding your guitar amp so that the volume knob on your amp can only be turned to "9" instead of "10" Why bother?.....Just don't turn the knob to "10"

 

Unless you leave your pots constantly maxed out all the time (and use that as an unchanging reference point constantly) it won't make a difference.

 

BTW the correct mod would be to just add a 500K resistor IN PARALLEL across the volume pot. Two 500K resistors in parallel create 250K total resistance. The maxed pot being one 500K resistor and the actual 500K resistor being the other. Soldering a resistor across the lugs of a pot is less expensive and easier than replacing a pot, and is easily reversed if you don't care for what you did....or you could replace the pot for a more permanent mod after this quick and dirty "test" You can use any power rated resistor there...even 1/4 watt....You can also do this to the tone knob as well. But like I said I would question why bother. Modding both knobs will muddy your tone all the more. have at it i guess