I put a SH12 in the bridge on my Squier VM 51 that had a set of Lil '59's in it. I wanted to have a more single coil tone in the neck, and have been curious about how a Screamin Demon would sound with 250k pots, so I switched it all out.
Here's the before pic.
And here's the after pics.
I was really happy with how the SH12 sounded. the 250k pots reduced some of the highs, but didn't make the pickup muddy at all. It sounded great thru my Boss Katana combo amp. Very PAF-ish to me. This pickup isn't a Trembucker, so if I get a chance to buy a used TB12 I'll jump at the chance and switch them out.
Still haven't tried my Demon with 250ks; I run it with a single 500k volume at the moment. I can believe it'd sound good with 250k, the Demon is my favorite humbucker right now and my experimentation with pot values on other pickups has never led to a changed opinion on the qualities of a pickup overall. Though I must ask, does it still have that punchy, horn-like treble, in particular on the plain strings above the 12th fret? Demon doesn't get enough credit for its smooth punch and dynamics. Glad you're a Demon fan, I def. am
It still has plenty of treble and punch, it's just not overbearing like it can get with a 500k pot. I like it so far. I didn't want the single coil to be overly bright with a 500k pot, so after doing some reading on others who've tried the 250k I did it.
It's not the same. When 500k pot has 250k signal to ground, it has equal signal to signal resistance -> signal is halved. 250k pot on full has 0 resistance.
However, you can test how guitar would sound with lower value pots by adding simplistic 250k passive volume pedal (like Ernie Ball vp) in the signal line right after the guitar. Or just a 500k/250k resistor between ground and lead on jack.
It seems to me after more playing of the guitar this weekend that the reduction in highs due to the 250k pots has let the mids stand out a bit more to me which makes it sound more "beefy" IMO. I'll be testing it more in a band setting at practice this weekend, so we'll see how opening up the amp more to "gig" volumes changes things. Playing at home I could only turn the amp up so high, but it sounded good from what I heard.
