1 MEG pots

Kac

Kac

Hootersologist
Haven’t seen them discussed lately.
I’ve never used one until today.

I got another Peavey Patriot and it came with a German Schaller Humbucker (that sounds great) wired up with a 250K volume pot. So I ripped that out and installed a 1M pot. Wow, the thing really rips now. Not a HUGE difference, but noticeable at least. Sorry, i didn’t make sound clips, I should have.

I have 1 more 1M pot to put in something. I might have to order more of em…
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Kac said:
Why aren’t we talking about using these more often?
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Because it's not really that interesting to most people.

The guitar modifying community has a major fault of being really easy to influence, especially for niche products. For example, I am the only person I know who owns a Vegatrem. I can write a review of how good it is and that's the only experience most people have with them. The general forum perception of this device would be dependent on one individual case. Chances are this likely "honeymoon" review would be exaggerated to an extent as well.

Pots are the exact opposite of this. Most of us at some point have used the wrong pot value as a place holder until we get our hands on a clean pot of the correct value. Since the changes are subtle and limited to a narrow frequency, if anyone does have a cool experience with it, others on the forum would think their reports are just someone with limited experience in guitar gear not understanding how to write an overzealous review.

Sorry if this is long winded and convoluted, I just woke up from a nap and that's how I get when that happens.
 
Also, swapping pots is a cheap mod. But sometimes people overlook easy things- they go right to buying a new guitar, or pickup swapping. But these days, with no-load tone pots, 1 meg pots are less likely to be suggested.
 
Chistopher said:
Because it's not really that interesting to most people.

The guitar modifying community has a major fault of being really easy to influence, especially for niche products. For example, I am the only person I know who owns a Vegatrem. I can write a review of how good it is and that's the only experience most people have with them. The general forum perception of this device would be dependent on one individual case. Chances are this likely "honeymoon" review would be exaggerated to an extent as well.

Pots are the exact opposite of this. Most of us at some point have used the wrong pot value as a place holder until we get our hands on a clean pot of the correct value. Since the changes are subtle and limited to a narrow frequency, if anyone does have a cool experience with it, others on the forum would think their reports are just someone with limited experience in guitar gear not understanding how to write an overzealous review.

Sorry if this is long winded and convoluted, I just woke up from a nap and that's how I get when that happens.
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Savage read!

I think I need a Vegatrem now.
 
alex1fly said:
Savage read!

I think I need a Vegatrem now.
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They are pretty cool contraptions, a bit expensive though. But if you can afford it and want a stable drop-in floating trem with both range and subtlety, it's really the only thing on the market for you.
 
I like em a lot. People assume that they're guaranteed to make the pickups super spiky but that's only true of already very trebly pickups like vintage single coils. Pickups that are already medium or dark without a trebly resonant peak can benefit from the extra detail that they allow. It also works really well on a bass.
 
dave74 said:
They're supposedly great with an Invader and other darker models like a Dimarzio Super3 for example.
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Haven’t tried one with an Invader yet. But I will when my invader and my extra 1M pots get delivered (along with a treble bleed as well)
 
The gap in effect becomes more minimal as you get higher - going from say 300k to 500k is greater tonal gap than 500k to 1M.
But for most its not something for the bridge slot....you have to be in seriously mismatched pickup to guitar territory for it to be the case. And unless you are wanting brighter but still with the option of rolling a tone knob back then simply disconnecting the tone circuit will do more to brighten than a swap to 1m. Plus you don't have to buy or install anything to get there.
 
Kac said:

I think I can hear a difference. Is it all in my head?
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Yes. (Since your ears are in your head).

But I agree with AlexR. I DO have some guitars with 1meg pots, but the difference in tone between the 1 meg and a 500k is slight. The difference in cost is huge. A tone bypass switch is a simple cheap way to solve the issue, but it also gives you some other great benefits as well.
 
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Yes a switch that directly routes the pickup to the output jack and bypasses everything is certain Ly a good option.

I just installed 2 1MEG volumes with treble bleed mods on my black Strat. Can definitely hear the increase in treble from the 500k pots.
 
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