TonyFlyingSquirrel said:
Here's a question:
Say that you don't use a tone pot, like myself, but you want the most transparent tone to come through, very little if any coloration to the tone.
Do you go with a 1mg vol pot? If so, do I use a cap with it, if so, what value? I want no loss of highs.
no tone pot = no cap. unless you do the treble bleed mod.
a 1 meg will generally brighten things up, certainly won't make it darker. but this is technically a form of coloration. there is a little hump in the upper end of a pickups responce. a higher value pot raises this hump. a low enough value pot can about eliminate it. but thats not usually desireable.
some very hot pups are less afected by pot values. i saw a graph of frequency responce for a duncan invador with diferent pots. it had a slight change in output but didn't affect the balance much.
don't get too caught up on anything confederatewk might have said about anything. he seemed to be an advocate of huge value pots for reasons he clearly didn't understand.
a 1-meg pot and no tone is exactly how my telecaster is wired, i like it, it seems to work well with my pickups. if you use a high enough value tone pot it won't have an audible effect at 10.and you can always wire it up to a switch or a no load pot if you can find one.
1-meg might not have an affect over 500k on some pups. also highs may get strong enough to overpower the lows making the guitar sound thin.
it all depends on your pickups and your ears.
beyond that there may be things to do to your pickup to get some more brightness. the metal covers on SOME pickups, not all, can change the sound for reasons i don't have an explaination for but tend to make it less bright. also i've read that if you shorten the adjustable pole peices on a pickup it can become more bright. acording to seymour duncan it helps focus the magnetic up twards the string, long pole peices draw it out the botom of the pickup and reduce power and treble.
