Pot Tapers

[Chistopher]

Most people who play clean prefer audio taper, most people who play with high gain prefer linear taper.

If you use high gain and like linear taper, I would recommend trying a reverse audio (antilog) taper pot. Linear pot at high gain is good if you want to go from a high gain sound to a somewhat clean sound, antilog is great if you want to want to use your volume as a solo boost

 

[ehdwuld]

I don't find linear or analog taper useful for either
you may be right in Your evaluation

What I do find is:

On my Green Gibson LP
With the audio taper 500k pot for volume

I can use the volume for distortion

I set the pickups to edge of breakup at 1/4 rolled off
Rolling up for breakup
and back down for clean

with the linear pots I have to got much further back down for the same effect

I always play with the volume wide open always

 

[Chistopher]

I guess it largely depends on your rig too, as all of guitar seems to. If you get your gain from tubes, the clipping is a lot less abrupt so a fast rolloff of an audio pot would work a lot better for your purposes. If the clipping of your distortion is more abrupt, such as with a modern high gain stomp box, an anti-log pot would be better.

anti-log is quite a bit of a jump, though. It's a shame "anti-vintage" (at 1/2 on the pot you get 70% of the volume) taper pots aren't a thing, but I find some good success using them as the gain control in a few of my hard clipping pedals I've been tweaking.

 

[jeremy]

using a cranked up tube amp, i prefer linear. lets you dial in all the shades of dirt easier. i havent tried a reverse log. i do like the mojotone vintage taper pots, kinda between audio and linear

 

[hamerfan]

What Jeremy said, a vintage 30% audio pot is not far from a linear pot an works great.

 

[Archer250]

That's interesting

I play high gain and my "clean" is just me rolling down the volume knob, and I prefer audio tapers. Maybe one of these days I'll give linear a try

 

[beaubrummels]

For me, linear for volume, audio for tone, doesn't matter what music I'm playing.

 

[solspirit]

What about DiMarzio custom taper pots?

 

[Ashurbanipal]

^^ maybe similar to a J taper? Which is meant to be between linear and audio.

I prefer audio taper. Most recently, have been using the 550k true vintage taper from Crazy Parts in my SG, which are cool. They're the 10% ones, so the roll off at either end of the range is more drastic, not for everyone. There's a 30% version too (they call it 'soft vintage taper'), which is like J taper.

Maybe the most even taper audio pot I've had experience is the EVH Bourns low friction. Some may think they're pricey, but if you're someone who rides the volume all the time for different levels of gain and dynamics, it's good.

 

[Mincer]

I dig audio taper for everything, and I usually go for a low friction pot for both volume and tone.

 

[solspirit]

I've also got a PRS custom taper 500k pot that I'll be experimenting with soon.

 

[Chistopher]

Vintage taper, J taper, 30% taper are all the same thing. I think most "custom tapers" are too, but I can't speak for all of them. They are 30% of the pots total value when set to 5, putting them halfway between linear and audio tapers. I prefer these in many applications, such as the filter control on my Rat.

An easy trick to make a 250k J taper pot is get a 1M audio pot and put a 330k resistor across the center an CCW lug. It's hard to do this trick for a 500k j taper pot because 2M audio pots are hard to find.