Question about changing pots

[twebb0716]

I've got an HSS American strat that, thanks to the awesome advice on this site, I'm changing the pickups on. I'm going putting a custom 8 in the bridge and a Little 59 in the neck (leaving the middle stock) so I'm effectively going to an HSH strat. While I'm working on the guitar I want to go ahead and replace the pots since I've heard it makes a big difference and it's a pretty cheap mod.

My question is, what does changing the pots actually do? I know there are 250k and 500k pots but I'm not sure which would be better for the changes I'm making. I'm really looking to beef up the tone to add more warmth and output to the cleans and more chunk, output, and drive to the distortion. Even though pots are only $5-$10 a piece is it really that worth it to mess with changing it? Also, do I need a pot for the volume knob and both tone knobs? Basically I'm clueless to this so any advice you've got is appreciated.

 

[uOpt]

Re: Question about changing pots

Do you actually use the pots or do you usually have them full open?

In an American Strat you probably don't have quality problems.

 

[cohibacris]

Re: Question about changing pots

Given what you've provided, I'd install the new pups without the pot swap and see how it sounds. It's likely you've got 250k pots in there now, and the 250ks generally dampen the highs a bit more than the 500ks. If you find that it's too warm/dark swap out to the 500k pots.
Not to confuse the matter more, but the question of tone capacitors should be mentioned. Strats (single coils) generally have .047 caps to help dump off more of the highs to ground. The .022 caps used normally for humbuckers dampen fewer highs to ground offering a brighter sound.

Short story, give it a go without swapping anything except the pups. Then start tweaking if you find you don't have what you want. There's tons of stuff on youtube and elsewhere explaining the subject deeper if you want to go that route (and I recommend it so you can hear before and after comparisons with other peoples time and effort!).

 

[Quibby]

Re: Question about changing pots

In my experience, if you have good quality pots to start with (subjective, I know) and being an American strat you would hope they are, no need to change them. Usually it's a good idea to change pots AND wiring for some good qual cloth-covered wire (not the cheap PVC wire) when you have an asian or mexican guitar. Good pots and wires will clean up the sound dramatically before you even need to get new pickups.

And there is a diff between vol and tone pots. Vol pots are usually Log(type a), and tone Linear(type b.)