Has anyone noticed tone improvements by swapping out switches and pots?

[BeyondAntares]

I have a Solar E2.7 and V1.7 and looking to upgrade Tone pots and switches. They're both double humbucker setups and I'm looking to swap out the 3 way switch to a 5 switch and swapping out the pots. What upgrades worked for all of you?

If it helps, I'm looking at Nazgul/Sentient combo in one and potentially an Alpha / Omega or Jupiter set in the second.

 

[Erlend_G]

Well- in general, using 250K pots will give you a softer, "warmer" tone with less presence-
while 500K /1M pots will make it sound "brighter" and "more present".

Running no pots/straight to jack- gives the most bold sound. I did this with one of my guitars.



Also; I'd suspect, that the carbon path used in the resistors; might have some effect on tone. But, I think it's so small- that if you use any quality Audio pot;
it will be just fine.

A switch that's clean, and makes good contact (low resistance when connected), will give a better signal. Than a switch full of crud, that would , well, dampen and often reduce the tonal quality.


I'd say, find the right potentiometer value for your guitar, pickups and setup; use a well-known, good brand. And you should be all good! .

Personally, I don't buy in to "high end cables" and that stuff. I even saw a high-end amplifier, where the volume knob was made out of wood. And they sold a seperate bottle of laquer, to finish the knob. For thousands of dollars. o. Sounds like a joke, but it wasn't.

Have a good time!

-Erl ♪

 

[BeyondAntares]

This is great feedback. I hadn't considered a push pull switch and 500k-1M Pot may be the go to here then.

Thanks

 

[nexion218]

Also, the manufacturing tolerance varies, and that may result better or worse tone percieved by the user when swapping. I've seen 500k pots measuring anything from 420 to 570, so no surprise there was a difference. The most consistent ones for me were the Seymour Duncan branded ones. Each one I have measures between 490 and 510. But the Solars use metric I guess, so you would have to get a reamer too to make them.fit

 

[GuitarStv]

Brand of switch, pot, and capacitor doesn't make an audible tonal difference.

Changing values though, definitely will make a big difference. Larger value tone pots will somewhat increase volume/brightness but can be rolled back to the lower value if desired. Changing the volume pot is a trickier matter . . . it fundamentally changes the way the pickup responds in a circuit - higher values will sound peakier and lower values will make the pickup sound more relaxed. Volume pot changes cannot be modified by rolling the volume down. Harsh pickups often benefit from lower value volume pots, and muddy pickups will often improve with higher value ones.

As has been mentioned, it's always a good idea to measure the values of the pots that you're using. If your pots have a 20% tolerance, that means that a 500k pot could be anywhere from 400 to 600k . . . and that's definitely a big enough difference to hear.

 

[orpheo]

I recently swapped a guitar from CTS pots to MEC. MEC's tolerances are mugh tighter, so if a CTS says 500K it can be as low as 350 but as high as 650! whereas MEC can be as low as 450 but as high as 550. Cheaper pots equal greater tolerance margins so it's hit and miss with those.

 

[hamerfan]

I recently swapped a guitar from CTS pots to MEC. MEC's tolerances are mugh tighter, so if a CTS says 500K it can be as low as 350 but as high as 650! whereas MEC can be as low as 450 but as high as 550. Cheaper pots equal greater tolerance margins so it's hit and miss with those.

Never a headache for me, because I meter all my pots. Sometimes I had to swap a higher value into the neck, but a low value in the bridge is very nice with taming the brightness. For tone pots the value is not so important, nevertheless most of time I disconnect the neck tone pot.

 

[ThreeChordWonder]

Don't buy the snake oil on vintage caps.

Back in the days before Elvis discovered cheeseburgers, girdles and jump suits, guitar manufacturers used the cheapest caps they could get. Don't kid yourself "tone" was the issue. That either meant paper-in-oil types (which eventually leak) or huge orange drops. Modern poly-whatever types are far cheaper, more reliable, and smaller, and do just the same job. Modern QA/QC probably means the tolerances are tighter too. Oh. And you really don't need a cap rated for tube amp 500 volt levels inside a guitar that produces just one volt, if not a fraction thereof, at most.

General concensus seems to be to start with 0.047 uF (uF is short for microfarad) caps for single coils (4+7=11, or two ones) or 0.022 uF for humbuckers 0.022 - two twos). Fender's single coil pickups generally sound brighter than humbuckers, so the larger cap values are possible to "tame" some of that brightness. A 0.022 uF cap will still work with a single coil, however. If you want darker tones fit a bigger cap. If you want brighter tones fit a smaller one.

If you're setting up an HSS strat, for example, it's quite permissible to set up one tone with a 0.022 uF cap for the bridge humbucker and a 0.047 uF for the single coils. Be careful how you wire the tone controls so you avoid having two in operation in P2, however.

As for pots, it's arguable that CTS brand ones are better built than some of the lookalikes, and may last longer. You generally know what you're getting with CTS, but cheap ones off a well known auction site can be pot (sorry) luck. You can always check their resistance by putting a multimeter across the two outer lugs.

Pot and coil circuits are "reactive", meaning the pot and pickup impedances interact to affect tone. It's been nearly 40 years since my last electronics class at University, so I can no longer do the math, and even my theory knowledge is stored on a 5-1/4 floppy disc inside my brain's attic. The concensus remains 500k pots for humbuckers, 250k for single coils. Going up or down will affect tone, but how or why escapes me.

 

[ErikH]

Changing the pots from loose tolerance 20% cheap dime-sized to tighter 10% or 5% tolerance quarter sized, I definitely notice a difference. Changing caps of same value but different material, not so much. Different values, certainly.

 

[beaubrummels]

I recently swapped a guitar from CTS pots to MEC. MEC's tolerances are mugh tighter, so if a CTS says 500K it can be as low as 350 but as high as 650! whereas MEC can be as low as 450 but as high as 550. Cheaper pots equal greater tolerance margins so it's hit and miss with those.

FWIW CTS pots come in 20% and 10% tolerance (I think the default is 10%?). But it sounds like you might have come across a batch of 30% though, which is either defective or was a very cheap run, e.g. the distributor ordered >20% to make it cheap with small quantity. CTS can also be bought with 5% tolerance (I did a custom order with a custom part number for this), but the prices go up as the tolerance comes down.

https://www.ctscorp.com/wp-content/uploads/Series-450G-Data-Sheet-Rev-B.pdf

 

[eclecticsynergy]

Pot values matter to tone. Materials, not so much. Cheap import stuff can fail over time, for me that's the main issue.
IMO the real advantage of good components - pots and especially switches - is that they'll last longer against the rigors of the road.
I've never had a quality (Centralab, CTS or Bourns) pot fail in a guitar, And some of mine have seen thousands of gigs over the decades.

As mentioned above, though, pots can vary in value and that can affect your highs noticeably
OP, I suspect that your double hum guitar came with 500K pots. Most humbucker guitars are spec'd for them.
If you have a Volt-Ohm meter, it's easy enough to check and see how close to spec they are.

As Hamerfan said, if one of them reads significantly higher you might move it to use as your neck volume control.
And if any are significantly lower they'd do better as tone controls.

But IMO if your existing pots are 500K (or pretty near that) it isn't really worth swapping them all out.

 

[NegativeEase]

Pot values matter to tone. Materials, not so much. Cheap import stuff can fail over time, for me that's the main issue.
IMO the real advantage of good components - pots and especially switches - is that they'll last longer against the rigors of the road.
I've never had a quality (Centralab, CTS or Bourns) pot fail in a guitar, And some of mine have seen thousands of gigs over the decades.

As mentioned above, though, pots can vary in value and that can affect your highs noticeably
OP, I suspect that your double hum guitar came with 500K pots. Most humbucker guitars are spec'd for them.
If you have a Volt-Ohm meter, it's easy enough to check and see how close to spec they are.

As Hamerfan said, if one of them reads significantly higher you might move it to use as your neck volume control.
And if any are significantly lower they'd do better as tone controls.

But IMO if your existing pots are 500K (or pretty near that) it isn't really worth swapping them all out.

I agree with this...

 

[Demanic]

Not unless I was replacing a failing one with a working one.

Sent from my SM-A115A using Tapatalk

 

[Top-L]

I recently swapped a guitar from CTS pots to MEC. MEC's tolerances are mugh tighter, so if a CTS says 500K it can be as low as 350 but as high as 650! whereas MEC can be as low as 450 but as high as 550. Cheaper pots equal greater tolerance margins so it's hit and miss with those.

You can just measure the pot to verify.

 

[AlexR]

^ And in most cases if you have separate vol/tone for certain positions then the lower value ones go into the bridge slots and the higher toward the neck. There is no need to dismiss wider tolerance as inferior.

 

[piblock]

Changing the pots from loose tolerance 20% cheap dime-sized to tighter 10% or 5% tolerance quarter sized, I definitely notice a difference. Changing caps of same value but different material, not so much. Different values, certainly.

That's my experience as well. If a pot is within spec, I can't tell a difference at all when it's on 10 / wide open. But the taper (on tone more than volume) can make a big difference and give you a more useable sweep from 0-10.

I've observed zero difference when changing cap materials (but not values) like you. Maybe it's there, but it's beyond my ears.

 

[Aceman]

Paper and oil caps need the oil changed every 3000 notes. That's why they aren't great for modern shred.

 

[GuitarStv]

Don't buy the snake oil on vintage caps.
General concensus seems to be to start with 0.047 uF (uF is short for microfarad) caps for single coils (4+7=11, or two ones) or 0.022 uF for humbuckers 0.022 - two twos). Fender's single coil pickups generally sound brighter than humbuckers, so the larger cap values are possible to "tame" some of that brightness. A 0.022 uF cap will still work with a single coil, however. If you want darker tones fit a bigger cap. If you want brighter tones fit a smaller one.

Caps are fun to play with . . . but it's important to remember that there's very little difference between even cap values if you've got your tone fully up. Once you get the tone knob 1/4 to 1/2 of the way down, the cap value really starts to make a difference. FWIW, I rarely want more than .033 uF on single coils - usually .022 works great for all pickups. 0.015 is great on the bridge pickup so you have more fine control over the highs but never turn it into mud.


As mentioned, there's zero difference in material of the cap - only the value matters.

 

[ErikH]

Paper and oil caps need the oil changed every 3000 notes. That's why they aren't great for modern shred.

Is fully synthetic better than synthetic blend for the tonez? Or is it a purist thing and only conventional will do?

 

[ThreeChordWonder]

Is fully synthetic better than synthetic blend for the tonez? Or is it a purist thing and only conventional will do?

If you've got a Vintage instrument or a Vintage repro, only Castrol R will do