Re: *Linear taper* long shaft 500K push pulls?
That's interesting regarding your '94 Standard. I've seen a handful of 70's Gibsons shortly after they made the official transition where pots were misplaced, linear tones, all linear, even reversed on the bridge vs neck pickup (it was a crazy time), but the official standard wiring since mid-1973 has been 300k linear volumes, and 500k audio tones. I've worked on thousands of Gibsons, did warranty service for them for years, and can comfortably state this as an unequivocal fact (Custom Shop / Reissue series aside, which do generally come with 500k audio all around). It's possible that yours was a glitch in manufacturing. Or if you acquired it second hand they may have been changed, as a great number of the early-90's 300k linear volume pots made by CGE proved to be defective with the wiper never fully reaching ground at 0, leaving a trickle of signal still coming through when turned down. Or still another possibility is that they recognized this problem in manufacturing around then and switched to the 500k audios they had stocked for tone to use all around for a brief period until the problem with the 300k linears was resolved from the supplier. I've not noticed such a period, but it's possible and I just may have missed it. In any case, 300k linear volume and 500k audio tone has been their standard arrangement in Les Pauls since mid-'73.
Regarding the differing effects, preferences can certainly change, but how I describe it is correct. Linear pots do not have significant effect until the bottom third on tone controls, compared to audio which spread the usable range of adjustment through a much broader area of rotation. This is a consistent rule until you get down in the extreme lower range of pot values (50k-ish and below). I made a series of videos demonstrating this with an external control box using multiple CTS pots selected to within 1% tolerance and driven /synched off a central geared shaft for real time switching and comparison. Tone pots are demonstrated in video 2, volumes in #3, and the effects of resistors and treble bleeds in #4.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLO33g8sM_b8V2Z25rI2VPWFOb00X79wIn
That's how they work.
Regarding the taper modifications, I believe you misunderstood. First, this was specifically in reference to volume controls, not tone. Indeed if you place a resistor across the outer lugs it will primarily affect the overall load with relatively little change to the taper. I was referring to a resistor between the center and upper lug of the volume however, which does alter the taper in the upper end of the sweep to more closely resemble a linear volume. Lower the value, greater the effect, 150k-330k often the most preferred range.
If you do prefer linear for tone that's quite fine, as a very small number of players indeed do. It's not by any stretch what most would describe as a more even sweep though. The tone only works off one side of the wiper, and requires quite an extreme logarithmic sweep to quickly get down to a range where it really engages the cap in any meaningful way across the coil. The volume on the other hand, simultaneously separates the coil from the amp on one side while also loading down the amp input on the other, which is just one of several reasons why a logarithmic resistance taper does not often accurately deliver a logarithmic effect on loudness (results will vary widely depending on pickups, amp, and settings used).
In any case, I'm not sure in what way you use your tone controls, and perhaps linear works fine for you. Audio is the nearly universal standard though, with the only exceptions typically being players who want almost the entire range packed down in to the very bottom. That's simply how they work.
