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Topic: Cutting a pot value in half? |
David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
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Posted 13 Feb 2009 6:43 am |
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I "need" to wire a Tele with separate volume controls for each pickup, and the best available concentric pots are 500K/500K or 500K/250K. I saw this SGF string about upping values:
http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=149736&highlight=potentiometer+resistor
In search of the info about lowering values, I found this:
http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/potm.htm
It appears as though you can drop 500's to about 300 with some 1/4watt 750K resistors - anyone have any experience with this? Does it affect the tone sweeps too? I am looking to use a 500/500 for volumes to a 3-way, then a master tone with a 250K linear pot and a .047uf cap. I really "need" another guitar, natch....  |
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Michael Maddex
From:
Northern New Mexico, USA
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Posted 13 Feb 2009 6:47 pm
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David, are you wanting to drop the 500K pots to 250K? If so, you can solder a 500K resistor across the two end terminals of the pot and then wire that unit as your pot. This would give an effective value of 250K. I don't think that you'll easily find a 500K resistor, though. The standard values are 470K and 510K. Using a 470K would give about 242K. Remember, that most of these components have a 5% or 10% tolerance, so 242K should work just fine. This will change the taper curve slightly.
HTH.
_________________
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert." -- Arthur C. Clarke |
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Donny Hinson
From:
Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.
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Posted 13 Feb 2009 7:25 pm
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| Quote: |
| I "need" to wire a Tele with separate volume controls for each pickup... |
It would help a lot if you told us what you're really trying to accomplish. In order for the controls not to interact with each other, you have to have some sort of isolator or a buffer circuit. You can go up or down with the values, and you can modify the tapers and tone with added components, but we can't tell you which is best without you telling us what you're trying to do in the first place.  |
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David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
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Posted 14 Feb 2009 7:46 am
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I am real used to the Gibson system, where in the middle switch position you can "temper" the bite of the bridge pickup by adding in some neck, or add bite to a primarily-neck setting also. Some people dislike it, but I have both my Warmoth "Mustang" and "Tele" wired with concentric pots for both the neck single coils and the bridge humbuckers, and it works great for me.
However, I find that I never use the tone control on the neck pickup, so there are two different harnesses I'm going to wire up:
A) A concentric pot, with each knob controlling the volumes of the two pickups, to a 3-way, to a master tone;
B) The concentric pot will control the tone and volume of the bridge pickup, the neck pickup will have volume only, to a 3-way switch.
One of these is not right and the other wrong, they're just different... I have read that having two 500K pots in a circuit is the "equivalent" of having one 250K pot. A traditional Fender uses two 250K pots... I just want to see if anyone has done this 750K resistor mod and if they like it. It would be fairly easy to wire these up without the resistors and bridge them in later if necessary to tame brightness.
FWIW, I have another guitar with two pickups with the separate volumes->switch->master tone setup, and I don't like the interactive positions too much, but that could be any number of things - mushy, toothless DiMarzios....  I need to rewire that thing one of these days. |
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