New Pot for Hot-Rails?

T

The Taylorplayer

New member
I recently installed a "Hot-Rails" pickup in the bridge position of my strat. What a great pick-up! I also re-wired the switch so that the lower tone control now "does" both the middle and bridge positions. Seeing as how the Hot-Rails is a humbucker, would it be of benefit to change that pot to a 500? Thanks in advance for any assistance. Will
 
Re: New Pot for Hot-Rails?

It would sound brighter, I would recommend this as hot rails can sound a bit dark.
 
Re: New Pot for Hot-Rails?

I have to disagree just because if your other two pickups are stock Fender single coils they might sound to bright with 500K pots. The Hot Rails lacked treble in my Strat too.

Maybe a no-load tone pot would help?

Or perhaps no tone pot for the bridge pickup as it was originally? I think I'd try that first.

Or, if you really think it sounds great, just leave everything as is.
 
Re: New Pot for Hot-Rails?

500K with single coils can sometimes make them ear-piercing, or open them up and they sound 10x better. With my MIM telecaster neck pickup, 500K did wonders to it and made it sound perfect. Stock MIM pickups can sound muddy because of low quality 250K pots, and they sometimes need 500K. I recommend trying it out to see if you like it.
 
Re: New Pot for Hot-Rails?

Not worth the trouble of changing pots if you already have good ones.

You can change the tone pot capacitor from 47nF to 22nF which is a quick fix and gets you halfway there.
 
Re: New Pot for Hot-Rails?

I have a hot rails in the bridge of my strat and simply used the original (250K I assume) volume pot. Sounds good to me.

I'd advise you to go with what is there. You can always change it out later if the hot rails sounds too dark for you.
 
Re: New Pot for Hot-Rails?

The problem you're having is absolutely completely 100% the volume pot. I have installed hot rails in 7 of my teles, one of hem being a 72 custom w a humbucker bridge single coil bridge. Change the volume pot to a 500k pot, or even a 1 meg depending how much brighter you'd like the hot rail. Also as far as your wiring and switching your green and black wires. This again I'm 100% positive that you would switch them from the wiring diagram ONLY if your using a Seymour with a stock or different brand of pickup. This beats the phase problem in the center position. I hope this helps. My 72 reissue has a arcane pickups custom hand wound wide humbucker and a hot rail in the bridge. The arcane pickup I changed to a 1 meg pot, hot rail 500k. I changed both the switch and input jack to switch craft, and th input jack I changed to be external with a plate Les Paul Style.
 
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