A bunch of potentiometer questions...

[Schlieren]

1. Why do these MEC DPDT pots look so much different than "normal" DPDT pots  (compare these as opposed to these)?  Is it just an "all shapes and sizes" sort of thing?

1a. Those MEC pots are hecka expensive.  Anybody have any experience with them?  Are they worth the expense?  Are their threaded bushings long enough for a Warmoth rear-routed Tele control box?

2. I am planning on having master tone / master volume / blend pot (with the switches for series / phase stuff).  What would happen if I used 500K for both the volume and tone, but used a 250K for the blend pot (like, say, this one?)

3. Most of what I've read is that tone controls, should one choose a linear taper, end up with most of the audible differences restricted between 0 and 3, with almost no differences between 4 and 10.  Has this been your experience?

4. What in the world is this thing and also what is this thing?  I assume I won't be needing them for my setup, yes?  If I had to guess, they look like parts for an active electronics system?

 

[whyachi]

Its almost cheaper to buy a Warwick / Framus and strip it for parts than to buy MEC electronics seperately. I only have experience with the bass side, and while they sound good, I have yet to run into a pickup that sounds $300 worth of good. That applies to all MEC parts.

 

[tfarny]

Highly recommend you just get normal ones - the ones Warmoth sells, like most everything on their site, are good quality and price and no surprises. If those are bad somehow and you need help, it'll be harder to assist with little pcbs in your guitar.

Pot basics:
You are best off with audio taper pots for everything. You are free to mix the values, it won't matter. The difference is that the 500k pots, when fully 'on' (ie volume and tone pot on 10), suck a bit less volume and specifically treble from your signal than a 250k. A 1meg sucks even less volume and tone from  your rig. At any point in your signal chain, a 500k pot substituted for a 250k pot will contribute to an overall slightly louder and brighter tone (which you can, of course, correct at the amp stage). The effect is cumulative - ie the more pots, and the lower values, the more volume / tone suck. You may want the 'warmer tone' of the 250k pots, to which I say: there's a treble knob on your amp. A blend pot is actually two 250k pots, so the circuit you're proposing has 2 x 500k and 2 x 250k pots. That's about double the number of pots that a standard pickup signal sees. Which is a reason to at least go for the 500k / 500k blend pot.
Finally: pot values are a pretty small deal, relatively speaking. It's not worth losing sleep over. I would just get all 500k or 1 meg pots either CTS or Alpha brand and be done with it.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

MEC does make a concentric pot that is also a push/pull.  I've never seen another one of those before, but I haven't been looking.

 

[Schlieren]

After reading and looking on Google a bit more, it appears the pots I linked above do not need those PCBs, in fact, some pedal makers / guitar modders / DIYers recommend removing the solder lugs from most pots anyway, in order to solder to the pins (like those MEC pots).

I guess the only thing remaining is finding a really good 500K blend pot.  I want to wait for SingleCoil.com to get back from the holiday, but who knows when Germans go back to work?  It's like it's a country full of bankers or perpetual college students or something.  For all I know, MEC is out ot lunch right now as well.

At this point I'm the House's wet dream: I'm at the craps table and ready to blow my wad.  I don't care how much money I spend on the pots at this point; I've already put so much money into components, I want the best.  If Alessandro had push / pulls, I'd be knocking on their door.

 

[bpmorton777]

I would agree with wat tfarny has said,

stick with the stuff that Warmoth sells. It's good quality. Onece you shove it in your ax you probably wont be able to tell a diff between the expensive pots and the reasonably priced stuff from Warmoth.

blend pots:  Ive never really found enough differance in the "in-between" settings on guitars with 3way toggles and 1vol per pickup....where you have one pickup on full and a little bit of the other....just give me one, the other or both on full. the switch by itself will suck less tone from your signal than a blend pot. i cant see this being too much diffferent on basses..besides bassists are anal about eq (active eq on the bass, passive on the amp+ active graphic) so why would they want something that sucked all the life out of the bass tone?

Im waiting to get flamed by all the full-time bassists    as Im just a part-time bassist.

Brian

 

[tfarny]

Yep. A pot that costs more or is rare doesn't mean it will actually do its job any better. It's a variable resistor on a rotary dial, what more do you need to know. That singlecoil.com site was pretty funny - they'll "match" your pots for a small fee, ensuring that they are exactly the same values, and that will ensure the tone.

I have a blend pot in my bass that I never use and I wish I had just put a switch in there for PJ parallel / P only. I'm going to take it out when I get my upgraded rotary tone switch in there.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

That's what I did on both my builds.  With a volume for each pickup and/or 3 way switch, don't need no stinkin' blend.  One more difference, a guitar does with a switch what a bass does with a knob.

 

[bpmorton777]

swiches seem to be working out pretty good for the folks at Rickenbacker. :icon_jokercolor:

Brian

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

They're also on other basses as well and there are blend pots on guitars.  For the majority of basses and guitars, it seems to follow the mold of blend knobs or multiple volumes for basses, and switches on guitars.

 

[Schlieren]

That singlecoil.com site was pretty funny - they'll "match" your pots for a small fee, ensuring that they are exactly the same values, and that will ensure the tone.

Actual pot values vary greatly from pot to pot within the same batch.  Any value lower than that which you assumed you'd be purchasing would darken your tone more than you might have wanted it to be, and you'll never hear just how sparkling or bright some particular pickup could have been.  Sounds to me like having somebody stick some pots on a multimeter would be worth a couple extra bucks, for some people.

Yep. A pot that costs more or is rare doesn't mean it will actually do its job any better.

Entirely true, and yet:

The posts I've read from people switching to Alessandro pots always did so because they weren't happy with any other pots they tried.  Then they finally try the expensive ones and whaddayaknow, they're happy.

Entirely likely they're simply proof of confirmation bias, but on the other hand they kept searching and then stopped once they found something that worked.  It's entirely possible, on the other hand, that everyone who says "it's a pot, there's no difference", says so simply because all the pots in most people's guitars are all equally bad.

From looking at basically every pot for sale anywhere in the world, I'd have to say this is at least possible.  Guitar pots all just look cheap, and the ones meant for industrial applications look solid, and more often than not, someone has to pay more for one.

For most people that isn't a big deal, because the default setting on all their pots is 10, and that's where they keep them at all times and they use their amps and hands to shape their tone, or are running through so many effects that it doesn't matter much either way.

That's all well and good, but dammit, if I'm making a custom guitar I want a custom guitar, y'know?

If they sound like crap or I don't notice a difference or something, I'll be sure to honk just as loud as can be. 

 

[tfarny]

The funny part is that a multimeter costs less than what they charge to use one for you for 2 secs, and has a huge # of uses beyond cap value determination. The funnier part is that they upsell you on the fact that both pots having the same value - ie 486k, will somehow be better than one of 492k and one of 480k. Why? Neither explained nor defended.  Any company (Kinman! Glendale!) that uses a lot of hocus pocus magical talk about components isn't getting my money easily.
If they make those claims about pots, either a) they believe them or b) they are lying to you. Which one is worse?  :icon_scratch:

 

[Schlieren]

492K versus 480k?  gross mischaracterization of current pot QC values, whose accuracy, even as advertised, is usually 20%.  so pots at 500K values vary as much as 100K in either direction, or more.

so more like: 380K versus 390K, for two pots advertised as 500K. . . now thrown away instead of sold to me and saving me precious time, or even better, saving me from thinking a couple pickups advertised a certain way turning out to sound completely different, and unsatisfactory to my ears.

in addition, i dont own a multimeter, have no idea how to use one, and have zero interest in learning how in order to build a single guitar (or even two); id never use the thing again as i am not an electrician nor a hobby electronics tinkerer; im buying guitar parts to build a guitar to play a guitar, not to become a swiss army knife macguyver, and not to order two pots, test them, find them to be lacking, order two more, ad infinitum, until i get two which perform as advertised

someone making a specific claim had better be able to back it up, since i can just as easily take two pots to a random tech, pay him $5, and have him tell me some guy's claims are bupkus, creating the worst enemy of commerce: bad word-of-mouth

it's the difference between price and value and why something that might take four seconds for a guy selling something is worth way more than that to lots of people buying from him

there is a fundamental difference between saying "our pots will have matching resistance values" and "our bridge is made specifically from forged alpha brass, resulting in an aligned front-faced matrix which provides better displaced momentum and synergistic connectivity between the metallic crystals and the grain alignment of the guitar body"

snake oil salesman existing anywhere does not justify fetishizing suspicion everywhere

 

[tfarny]

OK. Sorry, buy the matching pots then. I'm sure they will sound fine and you won't regret the purchase.  :icon_thumright: Just trying to save you a few bucks based on my experience tinkering with guitar circuits. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

 

[MUYFUE]

Where's that smiley that's eating popcorn?

 

[Schlieren]

OK. Sorry, buy the matching pots then. I'm sure they will sound fine and you won't regret the purchase.  :icon_thumright: Just trying to save you a few bucks based on my experience tinkering with guitar circuits. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

No apologies necessary, you see I looooooooove to throw away money!  

Conversations with MEC have yielded the fact that they do not have the ability to make 500K balance pots; that combined with the new information you gave me that a balance pot is the equivalent of 2 pots, and the fact that I can't really find a balance pot that feels not cheap has emboldened me to change the tone scheme to:

2 DPDT volume pots, one s/p one +phase / -phase
1 master tone pot

I have no idea why I got so stuck on the idea of having a balance / blend pot, I just thought the idea sounded really cool, more intuitive, and likely to get me actually to experiment beyond what I probably will end up doing most of the time: all settings on 10.

 

[Dan025]

i know this is old i just thought id put in my $0.02
those mec pots are designed for circuit boards and/or small connectors like used in computers for fans and switches.if they advertise them for instruments they are just buying them from an electronics supplier and selling them as something else. ofcorse you can solder anything to it and they might be used in instruments but are harder to work with. id get warmoth pots just because they are meant for the point to point style of wiring that is used in instruments. you can find better stuff in online electronics supply stores but the cts style are adequate.

that being said the whole matched pot thing is silly. ok it is a good idea to know the true pot values but even 20 ohms off advertised wont be audible and they dont need to be matched on one guitar. it is more critical to say make sure every 500k pot is very near 500k. a 400k pot will sound different from 600k if +/-20% is the tolerance. so if you want to reproduce the sound of a guitar then you must know what the actual value is and copy it. so it is a good idea to get +/-5% pots so you know what you are getting that is if you have the money. the idea that they must all be the same in one guitar is just nonsense.

 

[Schlieren]

those mec pots are designed for circuit boards and/or small connectors like used in computers for fans and switches.if they advertise them for instruments they are just buying them from an electronics supplier and selling them as something else.

Pretty sure they make them themselves, hence the whole "tell us what sort of pot you want and if we can make it we will" thing they've got going on.

that being said the whole matched pot thing is silly. ok it is a good idea to know the true pot values but even 20 ohms off advertised wont be audible and they dont need to be matched on one guitar. it is more critical to say make sure every 500k pot is very near 500k. a 400k pot will sound different from 600k if +/-20% is the tolerance. so if you want to reproduce the sound of a guitar then you must know what the actual value is and copy it. so it is a good idea to get +/-5% pots so you know what you are getting that is if you have the money. the idea that they must all be the same in one guitar is just nonsense.

The claim in question was for matched CAPS, not matched POTS; you can see this if you go here: http://www.singlecoil.com/shop.html , and click on "tone caps"

 

[Dan025]

those mec pots are designed for circuit boards and/or small connectors like used in computers for fans and switches.if they advertise them for instruments they are just buying them from an electronics supplier and selling them as something else.

Pretty sure they make them themselves, hence the whole "tell us what sort of pot you want and if we can make it we will" thing they've got going on.

that being said the whole matched pot thing is silly. ok it is a good idea to know the true pot values but even 20 ohms off advertised wont be audible and they dont need to be matched on one guitar. it is more critical to say make sure every 500k pot is very near 500k. a 400k pot will sound different from 600k if +/-20% is the tolerance. so if you want to reproduce the sound of a guitar then you must know what the actual value is and copy it. so it is a good idea to get +/-5% pots so you know what you are getting that is if you have the money. the idea that they must all be the same in one guitar is just nonsense.

The claim in question was for matched CAPS, not matched POTS; you can see this if you go here: http://www.singlecoil.com/shop.html , and click on "tone caps"

then they have machines designed to make pots that are for use with modern electronics and the pots still aren't as for point to point wiring and the argument still stands
i really don't care who makes them or how they are marketed the point remains the same.

same argument applies for caps.


since you seem to have answered your own questions and disagreed w everyone else why did you ask? you obviously know all there is to know on the subject. was it to mock our feeble attempts to stump you? clearly none of us are that smart.

 

[Schlieren]

then they have machines designed to make pots that are for use with modern electronics and the pots still aren't as for point to point wiring and the argument still stands
i really don't care who makes them or how they are marketed the point remains the same.

That a certain type of pot is often used in a certain way doesn't mean that is its sole use.

(MEC make the pots for Warwick basses, shh it's a secret don't tell anyone!)

same argument applies for caps.

Singlecoil.com and MEC are not affiliated, so I'm not sure which argument is the one which applies to both of them; is it the one about how "matched pots" is snake oil?  Neither site made that claim, although you posted as if one of them did.  "Matched caps" is snake oil?  Some people say they can hear a difference, others don't.  Forums are for posting opinions, thanks for presenting yours as gospel truth I guess?

since you seem to have answered your own questions and disagreed w everyone else why did you ask? you obviously know all there is to know on the subject. was it to mock our feeble attempts to stump you? clearly none of us are that smart.

Looks like somebody's having a case of the Mondays!

Tfarny raised some interesting points and changed my mind about quite a few things, for example, I'm sticking a Varitone in the guitar instead of a tone pot.

That you recommended Warmoth pots is interesting, considering - if you actually read what I wrote - I specifically am using DPDT pots. . . and it's pretty well-established, even on this board, that push-push pots (the only DPDT ones they sell) are mechanically dodgy at best.

With that in mind, I thank you for your enthusiasm, but I think I'll be sticking with my opinions instead of yours for the time being... as for the 'tude I seem to have evoked in you, sorry?

In any event, this thread seems to have run its course.