New CTS 500k pots - Bad volume taper

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ckisgen

New member
Can anyone who knows that they're doing tell by this picture what the problem is?

I just had new pots and caps put in my '97 Les Paul Standard. CTS 500k pots and Orange Drop caps (was supposed to be PIO but apparently his supplier was out of stock so he went with my 2nd choice..which were the Orange Drops).

My problem is that the volume knobs now work more like an on/off switch. Practically unusable for my situation. The volume tapers off like it's supposed to from 10 to around 8 and then completely drops off the map to practically nil. 0 - 8 is essentially the same volume (almost nothing)

Is this as simple as an audio vs linear taper? The tech didn't ask me which one I wanted and I probably should have been smarter and done more homework first but I guess I just assumed he'd know what to use. Regardless of the taper..who in their right mind would "prefer" or choose to have a volume pot operate this way? Again, it's completely unusable this way..unless you only leave your volume at 10 all of the time.

The overall sound even with the new Seth Lover pickups seem just a bit off to me also so far. I'm wondering if whatever is going on with these new volume pots / wiring might be affecting the overall sound/tone (even when everything is on 10?)

Help please.

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Re: New CTS 500k pots - Bad volume taper

I personally have grown to prefer linear taper for my volume pots. Yeah, audio taper have that drop from 10 to 8 or so....nice if a person does volume swells or otherwise desires that characteristic.

I do like audio taper for tone controls.
 
Re: New CTS 500k pots - Bad volume taper

I have had CTS pots let me down a couple of times in this same way. I only use Bourn's pots now, last year I purchased a matched set of 550ks from someone and two of the four didn't work and did the same thing you describe, no more CTS pots for me.
 
New CTS 500k pots - Bad volume taper

Chad said:
I personally have grown to prefer linear taper for my volume pots. Yeah, audio taper have that drop from 10 to 8 or so....nice if a person does volume swells or otherwise desires that characteristic.

I do like audio taper for tone controls.
Click to expand...

But..the way mine functions, doing volume swells would be impossible because there is no perceivable (nor usable) difference in volume from 1 - 8 .. Then all of the sudden when you get to 8 there's a huge spike in volume and THEN you finally get an expected increase in volume between 8 and 10. But that's not much room to do much of anything with. Certainly not a swell. And if you like to roll the volume down to clean up your tone or balance the mix between pickups in the middle position, you're pretty much screwed unless you just happen to only exist within the 8 - 10 realm. I just can't fathom this being an intentional design or that mine are operating as intended.

Can anyone tell by my picture if everything appears to be wired correctly? Or is it just likely a bad pot? Or is this really how these types of pots work?? (Who could use these??)

Lastly, possibly related..they feel super stiff (almost cheap..not fluid like my old ones). I originally chalked it up to the fact that maybe because they're brand new they just need to be broken in and will get less stiff over time? I've never put new pots on so I really don't know about this part. They feel pretty bad right now. Not at all what I was expecting from what I thought appeared to be kind of the "standard" brand and type of upgrade most people do to their Les Pauls (CTS 500k)
 
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Re: New CTS 500k pots - Bad volume taper

The wiring looks textbook and well done / factory quality to me. The pots are behaving correctly, for that value and taper. You would need linear pots (not audio/logorithmic taper) to change the behavior. The stiffness on CTS is normal. If they are loose from the beginning, they won't last.
 
Re: New CTS 500k pots - Bad volume taper

Yeah it looks fine from the pics, mine are also like that in behavior & stiffness, compared to cheaper bourns & Alpha pots that i have.

Try a treble bleed mod, one that has cap+resistor in parallel & other that has cap+resistor in series, they both affect the taper of the pot, you may like one over the other. Just get some 150k resistors & 1nF caps to check it out. The parallel mod will make it behave a lot more linearly than it does right now.
 
Re: New CTS 500k pots - Bad volume taper

Shooter.556 said:
I have had CTS pots let me down a couple of times in this same way. I only use Bourn's pots now, last year I purchased a matched set of 550ks from someone and two of the four didn't work and did the same thing you describe, no more CTS pots for me.
Click to expand...

^^^ this ^^^
 
Re: New CTS 500k pots - Bad volume taper

I wish I could solder that tidy, man. My work looks like a battlefield.
 
Re: New CTS 500k pots - Bad volume taper

Wicked clean job in there.

Yup...audio taper is the culprit here. Personally, I put linear for everything, cannot stand audio taper.
 
Re: New CTS 500k pots - Bad volume taper

The pot choice is as much a personal preference as pup choice. They are not "bad", they are not defective.

Some people like the majority of vol change to take place in the first 25% of rotation so that they don't have to rotate the knob so far to do vol swells, etc. The "problems" you are having are the "advantages" to someone else...even the stiffness of rotation. You can get pots that have very little resistance to rotation.

One thing I would definitely do is to put some insulating tape under the caps. You don't want that wire touching the metal base plate which provides the ground connection of all the components.
 
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