Paul Brainard
From:
Portland OR
|
Posted 19 Nov 2010 10:48 am |
|
Hi all, I have an old Silver Hawaiian & I think the pot is worn out, but I'm a little confused about it. I'm not actually sure if it's supposed to be tone or volume, but I think volume because there is no capacitor attached. The steel has been really mellow & has pretty low output. But the knob has been kind of scratchy, and every now and then if I find the right spot (usually when turned most of the way down) I suddenly get a huge jump in output, probably a worn out spot or piece of dust in there. But clearly I'm not getting the full output with the knob turned all the way up . . so I pulled out the pickup and measured the impedance across the two in-use terminals on the pot and discovered that the volume increases as the resistance does, which seems backwards to me! In fact if you bridge the terminals so the signal passes (I would think) straight to the output jack, you get nothing.
So I went ahead and just un-soldered & taped the wire that comes from the pickup, and the thing is now a tone & volume monster. But how is the signal getting through if the circuit is cut like that? Maybe through the body of the guitar? And the knob functions as some kind of choke on that? I guess I don't understand how this works. I'm also wondering if that pot is worn out, or if it is designed to choke the output to keep the tone clean? It measures about 780K max on the wired side, and the other unused side goes up to about 1600K. It's a big unit, too.
Maybe I'll get a pull-switch pot to put in there so I can pop it in or out of the circuit to get that full-blown signal when I need to rock out. Or convert it to a tone function, since I generally use a volume pedal. |
|
