Going to be doing a pickup swap and have a question?

RickD

RickD

New member
So I am not thrilled with the sound of the JB trembucker in my Jackson Soloist and have ordered a Distortion to replace it with, it will be here Friday. The Distortion has always been my go to pup for awhile now so I am pretty sure I will like it. My question is do I need to mess with the pots or cap or will the stock ones be fine still?

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Re: Going to be doing a pickup swap and have a question?

Going from JB to Distortion shouldn't require any other electronic component changes, ...unless those other components were what was making your JB sound bad.
 
Re: Going to be doing a pickup swap and have a question?

FWIW, I'm not sure I'd necessarily be as happy using the same value pots between a Distortion and a JB.

250k for the JB and 500k for the Distortion works for me, on average.
 
Re: Going to be doing a pickup swap and have a question?

im guessing you have 500k controls in that guitar so swap the pup and it should sound great
 
Re: Going to be doing a pickup swap and have a question?

I just looked and I can't tell what the volume is, but I can clearly see the tone is 250k both pots are CTS. The cap is .022, Its a USA SLH2 soloist and it has the stock electronics.
 
Re: Going to be doing a pickup swap and have a question?

I would try it with the stock electronics. If you don't hear anything that is 'wrong', just keep them.
 
Re: Going to be doing a pickup swap and have a question?

OK I just read somewhere that this guitar comes stock with 500k volume and 250k tone, will that sound right?
 
Re: Going to be doing a pickup swap and have a question?

I'd put a 500k tone in there.

It kinda begs the question as to whether the pot values were the reason you weren't as thrilled with the JB.
 
Re: Going to be doing a pickup swap and have a question?

For grins you could disconnect the tone control just to see if it helps (or hurts).

When you put the Distortion in you could use the tone control pot for the volume control and have no tone control, assuming the taper of the pot isn't linear (B250K). If you like it better, but still want a tone control, put in a pair of 500K pots. You might even consider a 1M pot and a 500K pot if you want it even brighter than with the single 250K volume and no tone control.
 
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Re: Going to be doing a pickup swap and have a question?

Ok should I replace the tone pot with 500k a or b?
 
Re: Going to be doing a pickup swap and have a question?

A-type for all pots, unless you like '50s wiring.
 
Re: Going to be doing a pickup swap and have a question?

I use both audio and linear taper. There's no way I would ever use a linear taper unless the tone control was downstream.
 
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Re: Going to be doing a pickup swap and have a question?

So the new 500k CTRS pot and the Duncan Distortion arrived in the mail today and I did the install. The guitar sounds the way I want it to now -thanks for all the advice! As a bonus my brother also has A SL2H and someone put a normal sized humbucker in it, so I installed the JB trembucker in his guitar and he is happy now too.
 
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