Pot taper? What do you like?

[misterwhizzy]

For volume and tone, what type do you prefer and why? I have stock Gibson pots, and in the bridge, it goes from almost off at 1-2 to basically full on at 3 with just a slight bit of thickness and hair being added up to 10. The sweep of the tone pot cuts treble more uniformly from 10 to 0, but again, I'm not sure if it's linear or audio. I was thinking of replacing them both, but I'm not sure if linear or audio is the way to go and in which spots.

 

[AlexR]

Re: Pot taper? What do you like?

Tone is not usually important, as I set at 1 position for a close-ish tonal balance between pickups and thats it (for neck its either open or at 10 for example)

Volume.....well it actually depends on the pickups actually - some pickups seem to like a quicker taper and others slower.....just depending on how they change with volume level. If I had to make a generalisation.....it would be even taper/change throughout the range of rolldown.

 

[Kamanda~SD]

Re: Pot taper? What do you like?

Experiment, simple as that.

I used to like Linear Vol and Audio Tone (which is opposite to most)...but in the last year or two I've been switching many of my guitars back to Audio Vol and Linear Tone. While doing so I've also been switching them to Bourns pots, just based on I like how they feel.

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

Re: Pot taper? What do you like?

I often use linear taper volume pots. Bournes guitar pots have a nice taper.


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[IMENATOR]

Re: Pot taper? What do you like?

Logarithmic (taper ?) for volume. Crank the gain and use the volume to go clean/crunch/lead

 

[BWOTW]

Re: Pot taper? What do you like?

Logarithmic (taper ?) for volume. Crank the gain and use the volume to go clean/crunch/lead

The same for me. When you play through a dirty amp and use the knob to clean the sound, audio/log taper works better. Like, it cleans up at 8 or so, and not under 3 (like most linear Gibson stock pots).

CTS audio pots work great for me, but the Gibson Historic ones that are sold separately have an even more extreme taper.

 

[Reverberocket2]

Re: Pot taper? What do you like?

I really like the Mojotone vintage taper CTS they are somewhere between audio and linear taper. I find them to have a really smooth transition from clean to mean on a single channel amp, especially when wired up 50's style in a Gibson.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Pot taper? What do you like?

Tone is always audio for me, volume can be either depending on how loud and compressed the pickups are.

 

[Hank-]

Re: Pot taper? What do you like?

I have a linear vol on one of my guitars, rest have audio pots, tone pots are all audio as well. Also the torque is important, i dislike super fast turning pots, I like them to move but with some effort involved in doing so. I'm not big on pinky volume swells, for those audio taper works much better too.

Look into RS Superpots, they have some with a custom taper made for them by cts. Dont have these but they usually came up un discussions online when i was researching.

My personal choice is a audio taper for vol with modern wiring & no load tone pots. No treble bleeds or 50s wiring. I dont use my volume knob a whole lot to get a wider fine tuning range for controlling gain, thats mostly handled by my foot by switching presets.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Pot taper? What do you like?

I don't know if I've ever checked. I have gone through several types/brands of pots but I didn't know what kind of taper they were. When I found one I liked, I stuck with it.

 

[ItsaBass]

Re: Pot taper? What do you like?

I generally like linear, but I can usually deal with audio until they crap out and need to be replaced.

I prefer linear because it takes the part of the pot range that I actually use (the very upper end), and stretches it way out, so the pots become less sensitive to minor changes. That makes it easier for me to dial in really subtle changes, and to get it back to where I was before a change. Audio tapers are way harder for me to use subtly in the upper end of the range, and it's hard to get back to where I was.