Rails pickup ID and vol/tone pot recommendation?

[Thoughtfree]

Hello folks, my first post here. Looking to ID a Seymour Duncan rails pickup of some type that I bought long ago - can't remember what it is. Photo is attached.

I'm seeking to mount it in the bass position of an F-style solid body, a single-pickup setup with only volume and tone controls. I just tried 500K pots - audio taper on volume, linear on tone - but the results were pretty bad - no volume drop until the last quarter-turn of the pot. What might the best rating pots be, for a simple V & T setup? 250Ks perhaps? I have no reliable ohmmeter, so can't tell you the ohmage of this pickup.

Thank you much for any replies!

 

[jeremy]

Re: Rails pickup ID and vol/tone pot recommendation?

did you like the tone with the volume all the way up? if so keep the 500k value and just get a different taper. if you found things too bright with everything up then id switch to a 250k volume, again with a different taper. i use linear taper pots for volume controls on some guitars and like it.

oh, and id guess that is a cool rails neck pup

 

[gregory]

Re: Rails pickup ID and vol/tone pot recommendation?

The behavior seems more like linear taper on the volume rather than audio taper. Did you wire the pots up correctly?

I only use linear taper on the volume if the tone is attached to the wiper/output, IOW, '50s wiring.

1NC: Cool Rails Neck?

 

[dystrust]

Re: Rails pickup ID and vol/tone pot recommendation?

+1 for Cool Rails neck.

I have mine wired up to a 500K pot (no tone control) and it sounds great; kind of like a single coil sized Jazz.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Rails pickup ID and vol/tone pot recommendation?

Welcome to the forum!
That is the old-style Rails. Great find! As stated, the taper of the pot has more to do with what kind of pot it is than the value. I have to try a few pots until I find one with the taper I like.

 

[Thoughtfree]

Re: Rails pickup ID and vol/tone pot recommendation?

Thanks, folks!

The 500k linear taper pot seems to work much better as a volume control than the audio taper pot. From reading the Internet on this topic, it seems that pot selection is a big "YMMV" situation.

Now for the tone control.

(Since the pickup and pots would be mounted on the pickguard, I wanted to avoid mounting and re-mounting the pickguard during testing. So I taped the pickup into its cavity with a bit of bubble pack at the bottom as a spacer, then cut a control plate from cardboard, stuck the pot into a hole in the cardboard, and taped that into place too. This enables testing different pots easily.)