How much do different pot values change the tone?

[Vespertine]

So I'm in the process of changing pups, but was wondering if perhaps all I need to do is change my current pot value. I like how my current pickups sound and all, but I feel they're a little too bright sounding, and therefore I usually find myself having to dial in the tone know to compensate for it. Right know I have 1Meg pots installed.

 

would swapping them for say 500 or 250 make a considerable difference in tone? My overall output would go down as well I would imagine, yes?

[_pete_]

It won't affect the output.

 

I have a Strat with an old Lawrence L500 humbucker in the bridge slot. Normally a 500K pot is used with humbuckers but the L500 is pretty bright. I swapped the 500K volume pot for a 250K and it took the edge off just a little bit. The guitar sounds warmer and fatter now.

[Belva]

You'll cut the bright right away. Depends on the pups as far as how much volume you lose. That's why your amp has a volume control. You can also run a resistor of around 800K on the hot legs of each pot. This will trim them down to around 300K.

[ZX-Matt]

http://www.griblinengineering.com/secrets.htm

[StevenJM]

1meg is probably too much, most humbuckers are made to be used with 500k pots, so i would just swap the pot out before getting new pickups... go to your local shop, it'll cost you $5...

 

i had 500k pots in a tele, it made my ears bleed so i swapped them for 250k and now it sounds like a tele should...

 

on my les paul, i put a gibson dirty fingers pickup in and it had the output i wanted but it didn't have the clarity i wanted... i put a 1 meg pot in and now its loud, heavy, full, and you can still hear whats being played...

 

so yes... the pots make a huge difference to the high frequencies of your pickups.

[Armitage]

 

Humbucker graph shown.

 

Humbuckers traditionally come with 500k volume and tone pots, wth .022 caps. Single coils traditionally use 250k pots. Remember, pickups were voiced/made to run at these values, changing the value changes their intended tone (good or bad is an opinion), as well as their output.

The top curve indicates virtually no load, the second curve down indicates a 1meg pot, the third down is a 500k pot, the fourth is a 250k pot and the bottom curve represents a 100k pot. As you can see, higher pots give you more output and raise the resonant peaks output. The resonant peak doesn't shift in frequency, but it does shift in amplitude. The resonant peak frequency of most HBs is around 5k to 7k.

With tone controls (they react differently in the circuit), a 250k pot is the same as turning your 500k tone pot down to it's resistive mid point (5 on a linear taper pot). Even on 10, a tone pot bleeds high end to ground, but pickups were designed in this circuit in mind and some people think they sound cold and glassy without a tone pot in the curcuit. A lot of people in the 80's used guitars without a tone pot, but they also used some rack gear like a Yamaha SPX-90 that killed off anything over 8k, (the SPX-90II went to 12k) so it helped a bit to make up for the loss.

 

 

If you want to see what it's like to use different value pots, without pulling breakable knobs and changing out your pots, here's a temporary way to see what it's like.

 

 

This is how you can hear what going from a 250k to 500k (or even 500k to 1 Meg) volume pot sounds like. Just disconnect the pickups output wire to the pot and put a 250k (or close, 240k or 270k), (or to try 1 Meg 500k or close), resistor in series. It'll sound the same, but you CAN'T turn the volume all the way off, remember this is just a test function. If you like it, go buy the pot.

You can also try doing it to your tone pot as shown. In many guitars with 250k tone pots, I've just left the resistor in permanently; you just can't turn it down as much.

 

 

 

 

This is how you can hear what going from a 500k volume and tone pot down to a 250k pot sounds like. Just put a 500k (or close e.g. 510k or 470k) resistor in parallel with the pots outer lugs. You can even leave it this way, the only difference will be the volume and tone pots taper (i.e. 10 will be 10, 0 will be 0, but it'll be half as loud at a different place on the knob).

 

P.S. if your "or close" value is slightly higher then the pot, the value will be slightly

[Angry Tele]

alot

[EADGBE]

 

It won't affect the output.

 

Yes it will. It will effect both the output and the highs.

[EADGBE]

 

So I'm in the process of changing pups, but was wondering if perhaps all I need to do is change my current pot value. I like how my current pickups sound and all, but I feel they're a little too bright sounding, and therefore I usually find myself having to dial in the tone know to compensate for it. Right know I have 1Meg pots installed. would swapping them for say 500 or 250 make a considerable difference in tone? My overall output would go down as well I would imagine, yes?

 

 

Yeah switch to 500K. It should do the trick. If it's still too bright you could then switch to one 500K and one 250K. Or two 250K.