Taper of the Seymour Duncan Bourns Pots?

H

Hyperborea

New member
Does anybody know what the taper ratio of the SD Bourns log pots is? The standard Bourns pots is 90:10 - the first 50% of rotation covers 90% of the resistance and the second 50% covers the remaining 10% of the resistance. http://www.bourns.com/data/global/pdfs/PDB241-GTR.pdf

This is too fast and it would be nice to find some with a shallower taper. I know that the Hamers apparently do but they are hard to find and expensive, the old Gibsons apparently did, and maybe some of those $50 Allesandro pots. Do the SD Bourns have a shallower drop? What's the ratio?
 
Re: Taper of the Seymour Duncan Bourns Pots?

Wouldn't linear taper just give you a (much) shallower taper? Would that just be too linear?
 
Re: Taper of the Seymour Duncan Bourns Pots?

Hyperborea...have you actually tried these pots out, or are you just assuming that it wont work for you based on what youve read on the net? All the facts and figures in the world cannot replace actual playing time.

As far as bourns pots go in my experience, they have replaced all the pots in my two main guitars and im not planning on going back. They work great, feel good and i think will last a long time. I have no idea what the taper is tho. I leave sweating over that stuff to the ppl who designed them. Mine are not the SD branded ones tho.

I reckon whatever you put in will work fine. Whatever the idiosyncracies are involving fine tuning between 2.3 and 2.5 etc on the volume pot will be ironed out with playing time.
 
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Re: Taper of the Seymour Duncan Bourns Pots?

No, I haven't tried the Bourns yet. I'm looking to rewire up two guitars and trying to decide on the pots to use and Bourns have been mentioned a number of times as better pots. I've used a few different pots in the past and pretty much everything out there either drops too fast - standard 90:10 log pots - or too slow - standard 50:50 linear pots.

The Bourns pots might have a better curve towards that 10% value at 50% rotation compared to other pots but at 50% rotation they're all going to be pretty much at 10% value even the Bourns pots.

I could take a linear pot and add a taper resistor make it more log-like and get close to 65:35 or 70:30 (or conversely with a log and use the taper to anti-log it some). However, that runs into other problems of it's own.

I'd like to get something in between the linear and the standard log. I was hoping that the SD Bourns pots had a better taper to go with their 4x price of the standard Bourns pots.

Does anybody know? Is it some sort of secret?
 
Re: Taper of the Seymour Duncan Bourns Pots?

the pots are great. I've also just bought the reissue Bourns vintage special volume pot and can't wait to try it. If you want to improve the usefulness of the taper, do the kinman volume mod . It's the best i've used and makes the pot even throughout its rotation.
 
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