If you are an oscilloscope jockey, it must make your day to look at the different wave pictures formed by comparing a no-load pot to a "regular" pot, But before you break out the champagne or light-up your favorite medication, you need to bring your head down to the real world where where real people live. As exciting as it may or may not be to see different waves on your screen, there is no audible sonic difference between these two different types of pots (comparing only quality pots of course...you shouldn't be wasting your money buying the really cheap ones anyway).
On all of my builds (I have about 3 dozen) I install tone bypass switches. These are wired to take the tone pot and cap completely out of the circuit at a flip of a switch. Switching back and forth, I can instantly hear the difference between a guitar with only a vol pot and the same guitar with a vol and tone pot. With the tone pot on 10 (which is where the no-load pot is supposed to remove the pot's resistance) there is absolutely no difference when a "regular" tone pot is in the circuit or not. For all practical purposes (meaning what you hear when you are giging), a "regular" tone pot on 10 has no resistance and has no tonal effect on your guitar. All those beautiful highs that your pup is capable of generating are there in spades.
I don't understand why anyone would go to the trouble trying to find no-load pots and paying the premium price for them. Unless it's all about cork sniffing. If I'm wrong, let me know. But don't give me any of that "I think it sounds better" emotional crap.
You can talk til you're blue in the face about your BMW or your Lexus, or your Mercedes, or your -----, but when it comes right down to it, my car can go just as fast (or actually quite a bit faster as the law will allow) and just as comfortably as yours. So sniff away while I'm placing an extra $30,000 in my pocket. Just saying...I'm nowhere near being a cork sniffer...just too practical for that.
A no-load pot is really just no better than a quality "regular" pot (like a CTS, Alpha, Fender, Duncan, Bourns, etc).
Heck, if your band is playing and you accidentally bump your tone control and turn it from 10 down to 8, nobody, and I mean NOBODY will even notice (maybe, and that's a BIG MAYBE, you may). Certainly, no one, even you, will be able to hear the difference between a no-load pot on 10 and a regular pot on 10.
On all of my builds (I have about 3 dozen) I install tone bypass switches. These are wired to take the tone pot and cap completely out of the circuit at a flip of a switch. Switching back and forth, I can instantly hear the difference between a guitar with only a vol pot and the same guitar with a vol and tone pot. With the tone pot on 10 (which is where the no-load pot is supposed to remove the pot's resistance) there is absolutely no difference when a "regular" tone pot is in the circuit or not. For all practical purposes (meaning what you hear when you are giging), a "regular" tone pot on 10 has no resistance and has no tonal effect on your guitar. All those beautiful highs that your pup is capable of generating are there in spades.
I don't understand why anyone would go to the trouble trying to find no-load pots and paying the premium price for them. Unless it's all about cork sniffing. If I'm wrong, let me know. But don't give me any of that "I think it sounds better" emotional crap.
You can talk til you're blue in the face about your BMW or your Lexus, or your Mercedes, or your -----, but when it comes right down to it, my car can go just as fast (or actually quite a bit faster as the law will allow) and just as comfortably as yours. So sniff away while I'm placing an extra $30,000 in my pocket. Just saying...I'm nowhere near being a cork sniffer...just too practical for that.
A no-load pot is really just no better than a quality "regular" pot (like a CTS, Alpha, Fender, Duncan, Bourns, etc).
Heck, if your band is playing and you accidentally bump your tone control and turn it from 10 down to 8, nobody, and I mean NOBODY will even notice (maybe, and that's a BIG MAYBE, you may). Certainly, no one, even you, will be able to hear the difference between a no-load pot on 10 and a regular pot on 10.
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