Re: Installing humbuckers - it's 500k and .022, right?
It isn't so much about humbucker vs. single coil, but about brightness vs. darkness, and also about how you want the controls to work.
Humbuckers tend to have less snap in the high end, so most people like to let them breath a bit more on the top end...i.e. 500K or 1M pots. The idea is that you mostly run your pots on 10, and you choose the pots that give you the right amount of treble there.
But you can use high valued pots on single coils to great effect. Look at the Fender Jazzmaster and Jaguar. The concept on those is that you provide an excess of brightness – the full tonal palette that the pickups have to offer. Then you dial it down using your knobs. Standard knob position with this approach is down from 10, not dimed – by design. It's kind of like an active electronics onboard control philosophy, but with passive electronics.
In other words, IMO you can't go too wrong by leaning higher in value. You can always remove high end as needed. But you can't add it if it isn't there to begin with.
I would go with 500K or 1M with those pickups, to let them fully breathe. If it's too much, just bring them down a bit with the onboard knobs. Even if you don't normally use it, you will find the extra treble that is available on tap to be useful if you ever get into high levels of distortion.
The cap determines which frequencies you pull down when you roll off treble. The lower the capacitance, the higher the frequency cutoff is. I find stock values are usually too high for what I like in a tone control. I usually half capacitance from stock as a matter of course, and sometimes quarter it in the end.
My go-to controls for darker pickups (i.e. Gibson style) are 1M linear with .01 uF caps. My go-to controls for brighter pickups (i.e. Fender style) are 500K linear with .022 uF.
