250K pots with humbucker?

[LushTone]

I have a Van Zandt bridge humbucker (slightly hotter PAF) for my hardtail strat build and need to decide on pots to use. It's gonna be wired with a Fralin Twangmaster in the neck, a humbucker sized single coil. I'm thinking 250K versus 500K pots will make for better strat tone in the neck, which is important to me.

So does anyone have experience with 250K pots being too muddy or too dark with bridge humbuckers? The guitar is an alder body with maple/rosewood neck build. I appreciate feedback! :help:

 

[Kostas]

I had a Duncan JB wired with a 300k volume & 250k tone in a Squier '51. It sounded great, I was even surprised with the cleans when it was split to single. I had read the JB has harsh highs and many people use it with 250k pots that's why I started with the 300k pot. I should mention none of these pots was measured so there may be 270k or 230k.

I have the Suhr DSV (9k) in my strat with 250k volume & tone pots. I wouldn't mind a slightly more bright tone but it doesn't bother me so much to change anything. The DSV has a double row of screws and it's advertised as a pickup with smoother top-end response.

If you have two volume pots choose the most appropriate for each pickup. If you have a master volume I would suggest to start with a 500k pot and if it's too bright you can add resistors to take it down to a value of your preference. I believe you can add the resistors for each position of the selector so the bridge would see a different value than the neck pickup. On the other hand, you can't put a 250k and raise the value if you don't like it. Would be good to buy measured matched pots, I bought a set measured at 261k for my tele at a regular price.

 

[Cagey]

You can turn a 500K pot down to 250K, but you can't crank a 250K pot up to 500K. The larger resistance results in less load, which makes for a wider frequency response. That usually translates into a "brighter" character.

I always use 500K pots regardless of the pickup type. You can always back them off if you need to, or back down the tone control. What you want is the full range of capability out of your pickups and the ability to hobble them if necessary or desirable.

Worst case is you put in 500K parts and you're unhappy, at which point you can just put a 500K resistor in parallel with the pot to effectively turn it into a 250K part. I've never found that to be necessary, but that's an inexpensive and easy solution.

 

[LushTone]

You can turn a 500K pot down to 250K, but you can't crank a 250K pot up to 500K. The larger resistance results in less load, which makes for a wider frequency response. That usually translates into a "brighter" character.

I always use 500K pots regardless of the pickup type. You can always back them off if you need to, or back down the tone control. What you want is the full range of capability out of your pickups and the ability to hobble them if necessary or desirable.

Worst case is you put in 500K parts and you're unhappy, at which point you can just put a 500K resistor in parallel with the pot to effectively turn it into a 250K part. I've never found that to be necessary, but that's an inexpensive and easy solution.

So I'm kinda new to wiring. If I use the 500k, which I'm leaning towards after some Youtube searching, should I use it for the master volume and both tones?

 

[Cagey]

Yes.

 

[LushTone]

Yes.

Sweet. Thanks Cagey, this is gonna be cool

 

[line6man]

People waste way too much time fussing over pot values. It makes very little difference. If you want to use a 250k pot, just go for it.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

The counter argument to "always use 500K pots, and you can use the tone control if it's too bright - now you have more possibilities" is, "when I use 500K pots, I always turn the tone down to 7 and never up to 10 - now I have slightly less range on my tone control". In that case, obviously, you may as well use a 250K pot.

I mean, there are always ways to get more range out of the guitar, if your answer to everything is "you can dial it out again with EQ". You use a JB humbucker? You'd get more treble with a 59. You use a humbucker? You'd get more with a single coil. Your pickup is wound with copper wire? You'd get more with silver wire. You have volume and tone controls? Disconnect them and use the amp controls instead. In the end you have to come to a point where you're happy with what comes out of the guitar, so that when you switch guitars you're not f**king with the amp controls every time.

Putting a 500K resistor in parallel with a 500K pot is the same as a 250K pot when the volume is at 10 or 0, but it does affect the sweep of the pot. It's a good mod though.

If it was me I'd connect that neck single coil through a 250K pot anyway, but the difference probably isn't worth worrying about to be quite honest.

 

[JD0x0]

I've been using 500k volume and 'no load' pots on everything including single coils. Strat still sounds like a strat, but you can dial in more of the resonant peak, if you want to, compared to 250K. Buckers have more clarity. I see no real downside. You can roll the tone control back, anyway, and it'll have the same effect as the lower value pot.

My Current strat has a master tone, master volume, master bass cut, essentially the G&L Legacy PTB with different component values...
Volume is 500K with a 200pF treble bleed
Master tone is 1Meg/'no Load' with a .015uf/15nF cap
Bass cut is a 1Meg with a .0027uF cap

Despite being so far from the 'standard' strat setup it still sounds completely like a strat. It's a tad more toppy and articulate with the tone wide open, but I actually tend to prefer this sound, especially in the neck, mid, and 'inbetween' positions. The tone control as I have it setup, can make very fine adjustments to the high end, making it very easy to dial in, especially on stage, IMO.

I've had issues with humbuckers sounding a bit lifeless even with 500k pots, which is one of the reasons I use 'no load' on everything. Doesn't choke the pickups, unless you want it to.
It's usually better to have an excess in highs, which can be filtered out later, rather than having those frequencies being filtered off, and trying to add it back, later in the signal.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

I use 500k's for everything, including the BariTele.

I'd rather have the clarity, especially for recording, than to try to add high's to a muddy audio source after the fact.

 

[Nicoli]

Personally, I tend to follow the 250k for singles, and 500k for humbuckers, however, a 250k pot will work just fine with a humbucker, as well as a 500k with a single. Tones in the ear of the beholder.  :laughing7:

 

[Strat Avenger]

I run 500k on everything (including the JB).  I can't stand to have the highs rolled back on my guitars. Adjust the tone controls on your amp to where the guitar sounds best to you.

 

[amigarobbo]

You can turn a 500K pot down to 250K, but you can't crank a 250K pot up to 500K. The larger resistance results in less load, which makes for a wider frequency response. That usually translates into a "brighter" character.

I always use 500K pots regardless of the pickup type. You can always back them off if you need to, or back down the tone control. What you want is the full range of capability out of your pickups and the ability to hobble them if necessary or desirable.

Worst case is you put in 500K parts and you're unhappy, at which point you can just put a 500K resistor in parallel with the pot to effectively turn it into a 250K part. I've never found that to be necessary, but that's an inexpensive and easy solution.

So I'm kinda new to wiring. If I use the 500k, which I'm leaning towards after some Youtube searching, should I use it for the master volume and both tones?

But if you have the volume on full as the gods of rock demand then it dosn't matter what the volume of the pot is, as the effective resistance is 0?

Isn't it?  :icon_scratch:

 

[Cagey]

But if you have the volume on full as the gods of rock demand then it dosn't matter what the volume of the pot is, as the effective resistance is 0? Isn't it?  :icon_scratch:

No. This is a typical guitar/bass control...

Vin is the signal generated by your pickup(s). Rint is internal resistance, which represents pickup impedance. What's key to note here is the resistance of the volume pot is in parallel with both the pickup(s) and Vout, which should be drawn as another resistor representing the input impedance of the amplifier.

The volume pot acts as a voltage divider. Since the input impedance is typically high, the fact that it's in parallel with the pot's wiper-to-side resistance doesn't have much effect on the total load the pickup sees, which is effectively the value of the volume pot.

Since it's an AC circuit, inductance and capacitance will enter into the equation and change behavior at different frequencies, but that's essentially how it works.

 

[Verne Bunsen]

But if you have the volume on full as the gods of rock demand then it dosn't matter what the volume of the pot is, as the effective resistance is 0?

Isn't it?  :icon_scratch:

In simplified fashion, it works the other way: The resistance between input and ground of a pot on "zero" is zero, the resistance of a pot on "ten" is it's rated value. The pot is always a path to ground, the resistance is what stands between. Where it gets tricky is the fact that a potentiometer is not simply a variable resistor, it is a voltage divider. The pickup sees the entire load of the pot regardless of the pot position, the thing that changes is what the pot then does with the signal: how much goes to output and how much goes to ground. This is why the idea that you can "turn down a 500k to 250k" is a bit off. You can indeed reduce the resistance between input and ground to 250k, but it will sound like a 500k pot at 50%, and not like a 250k pot at 100%. Otherwise, if 250k pots were just like 500k pots turned halfway down, 250k pots would allow only half the max output of 500ks, yes? The noticeable effect of different pot values is not on output but on high frequency attenuation. Higher value pots keep more high frequencies in the signal while lower value pots allow more high frequencies to pass to ground. This is why 250ks are commonly associated with bright single coils (to tame the "ice pick") and 500ks are commonly associated with darker humbuckers (to keep it out of the mud). I agree that there is no "right or wrong", but there is certainly a difference.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

I run 500k on everything (including the JB).  I can't stand to have the highs rolled back on my guitars. Adjust the tone controls on your amp to where the guitar sounds best to you.

This has been my practice for over 35 years as well.

 

[amigarobbo]

I see.


:icon_scratch: Maybe time to up those pot values on my rather dull sounding old Epiphone Tony Iommi sig SG I've got kicking around...*

What happens on Guitars with no volume or tone controls at all?




*The one with the pickups wired the wrong way around, I've been meaning to fix that for.... errr years.

 

[Verne Bunsen]

What happens on Guitars with no volume or tone controls at all?

A whole lot of top-end. You won't have any difficulty cutting through the mix, that's for sure! Neil Young uses a mini-toggle on Old Black to bypass the controls for the bridge pickup for maximum exploding-amp-tone. I used a push/pull on one of my Tele's to do the same thing at one point, it's a surprisingly dramatic effect, especially coming from 250k pots. If you had 1Meg pots, bypassing them would be much less dramatic because the 1Megs already keep so much more of the high end intact.

 

[bagman67]

Would that be the same principle as the one behind the "blower switch" that Anderson uses on their guitars?

 

[Verne Bunsen]

Yep, same concept. Often the "blower switch" will have the additional functionality of bypassing the selector switch and going straight to the bridge, so you can go from rolled-off creamy neck tone to end-of-the-world-face-meltery in one fell swoop. Duncan does a good rundown here:
http://www.seymourduncan.com/blog/the-tone-garage/guitar-wiring-explored-adding-a-blower-switch