Tele with neck 'bucker: Which pot value for tone?

[stevewal]

Hey all, I'm building a tele with a SD '59 PAF in the neck, Fralin Blues Special Strat middle pickup and a Callaham Wind Fralin Tele bridge pickup, and  typical tele control layout (i.e. blade switch, one volume, one tone). I'm seeking some input on what value of pot to use for the tone: Stick with the typical 250K, or should I try replicating what Fender did with the HS Telecaster (parts list) and use a 500K audio taper pot to keep the humbucker happy and some 270K resistors in parallel with each single coil?  Or, any other bright ideas that will work well with the singles and humbucker, and don't involve adding another tone pot or concentric pots (both volume and tone pots are already going to have DPDT switches, too).  I'm planning on doing some coil splitting with the humbucker, if that changes anyone's opinion.  Also, does anyone know what purpose that resistor serves in the HS Tele wiring?  Thanks in advance.

 

[Firebird211]

Those resistors in parallel to the single coil cuts the resistance that the single coils see to ground, meanwhile you can keep the 500k value for the humbucker.  The pot for the single coil will look more like 175k ohms because of the resistor it has in parallel.  The purpose of the resistor in short is to give you the best of both worlds with the one pot.

 

[stevewal]

Ok, that makes sense.  So if I could find a 500K resistor, that would make the pot look more like a 250K?  Also, I'm guessing if I did one for each of the single coils, that would make the pot look even smaller if those to pickups are used in parallel?

 

[Firebird211]

Your absolutely right about just using 500k resistors, it will give you 250k, which seems more ideal to me as well.  Fender may do it their way for whatever reason.  If you are combining the single coils in parallel, the resistance is cut in half again.  There's nothing bad about that since you already know that a parallel configuration will give you less output volume anyway (in this case I bet a little less output than normal).  If your vol and tone pot, both 500k, are connected in parallel, the overall resistance is cut to 250k too.  You probably already know, but the simple rule for parallel is when the values are the same, they average each other out and the value is split in half.  If the resistors aren't the same the exact value is the product divided by the sum, which always turns out to be less than the smallest resistor.  You could even stick a 1 Meg resistor in there and the value would get reduced to around 249.99k.  I would use as many tried and true Fender Tele examples as you can, and tweaking the value of those resistors shouldn't hurt.

 

[stevewal]

There's a Fry's Electronics a few miles from my house.  I stopped by there last night and they have a healthy supply of 2% tolerance metal film resistors in a whole slew of values, so tweaking resistor values shouldn't be a problem.  As I recall the closest things to a 500K were 430K and 510K.

 

[tfarny]

There is no right answer, just fiddle with a range of values till you find your favorite. I've decided I like smaller values like .01uf because then it's a more of a true treble bleed and not a treble-and-mids bleed.