Pots and Caps For Tele Custom

[chopperferrari]

Hey Fellas,

I've got a tele custom.

the neck pick up is a standard sized humbucker.

in the bridge i've got a Little 59

what value pots and caps should i have for the best tone balance between the pick ups? its a tele custom so its got a volume and tone pot for each pick up (les paul styley).

if anyone could help that would be amazing.

Thanks! Ben

 

[Kam]

Re: Pots and Caps For Tele Custom

Different pot values are really just a way to fine-tune your tone and to shift the EQ to exactly where you want it to be, after you've got it in the ballpark with your guitar and pickups. 500k let more treble through than 250k, so they're generally used in darker guitars like Les Pauls or guitars with humbuckers.

I'd go with 500k for the neck. For the bridge I could go either way, really. In the bridge of an alder bodied fat strat I generally go with 250k, but I like fairly dark tones with big bottom end. I've never used the lil '59, but I've used it's big brother successfully with both 250k and 500k in Strats and SGs.

Personally, I'd go with 500k on the neck and 250k on the bridge, though it's really all personal taste. If you put 250k in and find your tone lacking a little high end then you can swap them for 500k. The great thing is that pots aren't all that expensive, so they're easy to experiment with.

You haven't mentioned what kind of wood your Tele is made from. How does it sound right now? And what kind of tones are you looking for?

 

[chopperferrari]

Re: Pots and Caps For Tele Custom

Hi Kam,

thanks for you reply.

its an alder body and maple neck. at the moment i've got the humbucker in the neck and a standard tele pick-up in the bridge, both with 500k pots. i find the humbucker to be very warm and the bridge to be really quite bright in comparison. both sounds great but the difference is large and makes it impracticable to switch during a gig without changing the tone on my amp.

thanks

 

[Kam]

Re: Pots and Caps For Tele Custom

Hi Kam,

thanks for you reply.

its an alder body and maple neck. at the moment i've got the humbucker in the neck and a standard tele pick-up in the bridge, both with 500k pots. i find the humbucker to be very warm and the bridge to be really quite bright in comparison. both sounds great but the difference is large and makes it impracticable to switch during a gig without changing the tone on my amp.

thanks

Aye, it's not unusual to have a little trouble mixing singles and 'buckers with the same value pot, especially if the single is in the bridge.

Since you already have the 500k pots installed, I'd just go ahead and try your new bridge pickup with them before spending any extra money. Then, if you want to shift the EQ a little further away from ice-pick treble frequencies you can install a couple of two-fiddys. No need to worry about it until you're absolutely sure that you want to change the tone further.

 

[Ace Flibble]

Re: Pots and Caps For Tele Custom

I'm not using the Little 59 and I dunno what humbucker you'll be using so yours may need quite different pots to mine, but I've got a Tele Custom with a Hot Rails in the bridge (roughly the same sort of thing?) and a Gibson BurstBucker #1 in the neck (pretty standard PAF copy); with these I use 500k pots for both of the neck controls and for the bridge I use a 500k pot for the tone control and a 300k pot for the volume control.

Originally it had 500k pots all-round and the bridge pickup was a touch too bright; shifting one of the pots to 300k fixed this. As I understand it the Little '59 has a slightly thinner and brighter tone than the Hot Rails so I would think if you used one 250k pot for either its volume or tone control, that would probably sort it out if you find it's too bright with two 500k pots. I would think two 250k pots would be overkill and make it quite muddy.

 

[GuitarDoc]

Re: Pots and Caps For Tele Custom

I hate to sound negative here, but,...why are you even asking such a question?!

You've got the guitar. Plug it in and play it. What do you hear? Do you like it? You've got vol and tone controls for each pup. Do you feel the need to turn down the tone control on the bridge pup because it is too bright?

Well then, you have two choices....Play with the tone control turned down (not a bad idea since you always have the option to turn it up if you want), or put in a lower value volume pot (250k or 300k).

But the main thing is...PLAY YOUR GUIITAR AND SEE WHAT YOU WANT. Don't ask others what you want. If you have to experiment and try different value pots, go ahead. It's not a big expense and you'll gain more firsthand knowledge than if you ask someone else. Changing the pot value is like turning knob on your existing pot. Not very difficult!

Now if you were going to change pups, asking for advice about a sought-after tone is a good idea. It gets pretty expensive to buy every pup made just to see what sounds good in your guitar.

But let's get real...

You know that the bridge sounds too bright so you ask others what tone you want??

 

[GuitarDoc]

Re: Pots and Caps For Tele Custom

By the way...I'd go with 500k's all around with .022 caps. Then I'd actually use the controls to get the right amount of treble that I want.

 

[chopperferrari]

Re: Pots and Caps For Tele Custom

Hi Guys,

Thanks so much for you help! you've been ace! it just so happens i've got one 250k pot lying around so i can swap it if the 500k isn't happening.

GuitarDoc: i'm asking this question not because i want to sound like some else or because i want to be told what to do. I know exactly what i want the guitar to sound like and what the problem is, i however do not know how to solve it. The reason i was asking this question here is because i do not know very much about the relationship between the value of pots and/or capacitors effect the sound of pickups in combination. i do not understand why that is information that i shouldn't be looking for on guitar pickup forum as you suggest, maybe this is because a lot of people post here asking either silly or seemingly silly questions and i know that can be frustrating. it can often not be clear what people's motives are for asking questions, and maybe that was true of mine. anyways just wanted to clear that up. Thanks for the info in you post, most helpful.

 

[GuitarDoc]

Re: Pots and Caps For Tele Custom

My point was that only you know how much or how little treble you want in order to acheive the balance you want. It would be like asking someone how tight to tie your right shoe lace to make it feel the same as the left shoe. You have the ability to turn your tone control knob and see what sounds good to you. If you have to turn your tone pot down about half to get the tone you want, and you don't want to be bothered using your tone pot to do this, then get a pot that is roughly 1/2 the value of your existing pot.

Sorry if I misjudged your post. Thanks for clarifuing that. I would think that you could have just asked what the relationship is between pot value and toneif that's what you wanted to know.

I'm not usually so negative. Not much of a welcome to the forum. Sorry. And welcome.