Re: 1986 Kramer Pacer Deluxe - Pickup help!!
If your Pacer is the top-routed, Strat-style vol-tone-tone version then I'd suggest using a 500k volume pot and then modify the single coils' tone pot(s) to roll off more high-end. (Or just get used to turning down their tone controls more than you usually would.) Bumping up the capacitor value to something like a 0.1μ is an easy way to do this; even with the tone controls all the way up, some of the highest frequencies will be rounded off. This way your volume control has the same taper for all your pickups and the volume change between the humbucker and the singles won't be as drastic as wiring additional resistors to the single coils, but the singles won't be getting shrill either. Those guitars have two tone controls for this very purpose, so you might as well use 'em.
If your Pacer is one of the 1-vol-1-tone ones, let alone a volume-only model (sorry, I forget which Pacers have which control set-up; Kramer changed them nearly every year), then it gets more complicated but still doable.
For models without tone controls or with shared tone controls, I'd recommend rigging up the single coils with a resistor and capacitor to give the effect of a tone control being rolled down, rather than making the single coils see a lower-resistance volume control. The humbucker will already overpower the single coils even if they're on the same volume pot with the same resistance. If you make the single coils see a lower resistance volume control then that difference will only become bigger. And after all, the main problem of putting single coils through a 500k volume pot isn't the overall volume, but the shrill high-end.
So, a 'fake' tone control is what you want for those guitars, not a different volume control/resistance. A .047μ capacitor and a 400k resistor will usually do the trick with single coils. This is like wiring in a new 500k tone control and turning it down to '8', just shaving off the extra shrillness that comes with putting a single coil through a 500k volume pot.
A .033μ capacitor and 250k or 300k resistor works better if the humbucker you're trying to balance with is actually quite mild in output, or if the single coils are already actually quite warm-toned. Of course what is too much for one person is not enough for another, so be prepared to experiment to find the right combination of capacitor and resistor values that will round off the single coils' sound in a way you like.
Using a 300k pot for the volume control can also help. You will not be surprised to learn this gives you a sound in between a 250k and 500k, so the humbucker will get a little dark but not quite muddy, and the single coils will be a little bright but not piercing. 300k was actually the original standard for humbuckers, until the mid-60s, and the Gibson Custom Shop still use them on some models. ESP use them on some volume-only guitars, too. A 300k volume control for both the humbucker and single coils, and then a capacitor and resistor to 'fake' a tone control being rolled slightly down, is my standard method of balancing humbuckers with any type of single coil. (So much so that I no longer wire in 'real' tone controls at all, for any guitars; I've found the values I like and prefer those to be permanent, rather than on controls which can be knocked out of position.)
