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

[ThreeChordWonder]

Whale oil might work but you'll have 1,000,000,000 hippies blockading your gigs

 

[GuitarStv]

Whale oil might work but you'll have 1,000,000,000 hippies blockading your gigs

Getting good whale oil caps is always a fluke.

 

[Aceman]

The only reason I would swap out that stuff is because the wrong pot value - 250 vs 500.

Otherwise, if it works, it works. If it breaks under my normal use (and none ever have) then maybe I upgrade, a little.

 

[plasticscouse]

Yes. I have an early 2000s Gibson SG & found it quite dark all original at the time, I had many a pickup in it, but couldn’t really bond with it, I also put a new wiring harness (six string supplies in the UK)in to get a fresh star & I might have burned out the old ones. Still no joy.

but I put the original 490 t&re pickups back in with the harness and now it sounds so much nicer & brightened it just enough.

it on the other side, I changed the capacitor on a PRS SE Bernie Marsden Single cut to an orange drop. Same alpha pots, & made no difference at all.

 

[Artie]

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.

I've got three of the Bourns 500k cermet "Premium" pots here. Two read right about at 400k, and one reads 384k. This is with a good quality, calibrated Fluke meter. The 384 isn't even in the 20% tolerance.

 

[Phantasmagoria]

There's often a bit of a difference (even swapping output jacks's)....whether for better or for worse, that's a crapshoot.

 

[Mincer]

I generally swap out pots only if there is static I can't get rid of with DeOxit, if I don't like the taper, or it doesn't turn easily enough. As far as that last point, I like my volume and tone to be super quick and friction-free. I do a lot of volume and tone swells.

 

[Wound_Up]

I've got three of the Bourns 500k cermet "Premium" pots here. Two read right about at 400k, and one reads 384k. This is with a good quality, calibrated Fluke meter. The 384 isn't even in the 20% tolerance.

You do know that 20% tolerance means ±20% right? I've got a 525k 5% tolerance CTS pot that's right outside of the tolerance also Around 496k and it should be between 500 and 525k. 16k ohms ain't much.

 

[Wound_Up]

I generally swap out pots only if there is static I can't get rid of with DeOxit, if I don't like the taper, or it doesn't turn easily enough. As far as that last point, I like my volume and tone to be super quick and friction-free. I do a lot of volume and tone swells.

I cant tell you how much I recommend Deoxit after my own personal experience with it. One of my guitars had scratchy pots when I got it. Instead of ordering Deoxit, I went to the auto parts store and bought standard contact cleaner. And it didn't make a lick of difference to those pots. Not one bit.

So I dealt with it for like the next year. I finally remembered I wanted to pick up some Deoxit to try so I ordered a can. It gets here a few days later and I immediately take it to the Guitar and get to work. I spray the pots, give em a few twists, and walk away to let it dry.

I come back like a half hour later and plug it in and the scratch pots are GONE. I was flabbergasted! Lol I couldn't believe it actually worked lol

 

[Artie]

You do know that 20% tolerance means ±20% right?

Yup. After over half a century in electronics, I do.

384k is -23.2%. Out of tolerance.

 

[orpheo]

You can just measure the pot to verify.

'you can just'.
No.

When you have to scrounge through literally thousands of pots per shipment and you want to have consistency, measuring every single pot is just not an option.

 

[LesStrat]

Yes, when changing pot values.

 

[IMENATOR]

Not really. Switching to different pickups is the most important change but upgrading pots/switches is a good idea if you think the stock ones could fail at you at some point. The second most dramatic tone improvement ever got was turning my close back cab into an open back (I simply removed the back cover), it was like removing a blanket from the speaker. I always had this narrow view of "open back for vintage, closed back for high gain", I enjoy my high gain sound much better now.