Tele Pot Choices - 250 or 500k

T

Torana

New member
Hi all.
I have a Telecaster with a SD Jazz (humbucker) in the neck position and standard Fender single coil in the bridge. I am looking at updating the wiring and am stuck on which value pots to go with - 250k 0r 500k?
To my mind, the easy way out would be to purchase a SD VINTAGE STACK STK-T3b and use 500k pots.
Does this make sense to anyone and do the stacked SD"s respond better to 250k or 500k pots?
Cheers.
 
Last edited:
Re: Tele Pot Choices - 250 or 500k

I like 500k pots way more than 250k. They let the beauty of the guitar and pickups come through. If you need to, just roll off the tone. I'm actually going to try 1 meg pots in my new sss strat.
 
Re: Tele Pot Choices - 250 or 500k

Torana said:
Hi all.
I have a Telecaster with a SD Jazz (humbucker) in the neck position and standard Fender single coil in the bridge. I am looking at updating the wiring and am stuck on which value pots to go with - 250k 0r 500k?
To my mind, the easy way out would be to purchase a SD VINTAGE STACK STK-T3b and use 500k pots.
Does this make sense to anyone and do the stacked SD"s respond better to 250k or 500k pots?
Cheers.
Click to expand...

It really depends on the pickup; some of them respond well to 500K and others don't. I have a Hot Stack in the bridge of my Tele with 500K pots and it sounds great. Can't say that I've tried the Vintage Stack for Tele.
 
Re: Tele Pot Choices - 250 or 500k

dystrust said:
I have a SM-1 Vintage Firebird pup in the neck position of that guitar.
Click to expand...

tele_close_zpszgxjj7jg.jpg
 
Re: Tele Pot Choices - 250 or 500k

Torana said:
Hi all.
I have a Telecaster with a SD Jazz (humbucker) in the neck position and standard Fender single coil in the bridge. I am looking at updating the wiring and am stuck on which value pots to go with - 250k 0r 500k?
To my mind, the easy way out would be to purchase a SD VINTAGE STACK STK-T3b and use 500k pots.
Does this make sense to anyone and do the stacked SD"s respond better to 250k or 500k pots?
Cheers.
Click to expand...

What technically happens is the 500k results in a higher Q factor than 250k.

Here's what the Q factor looks like in an amplitude by frequency plot:

Pic-1-Resonance-and-Pot-Value-Graph.jpg


The taller the peak, the more treble you get, but if that peak is too tall, the treble just sounds shrill, because it's putting too great of an emphasis on a single harmonic, rather than spreading the emphasis out over many of them.

When a pickup has a lot of conductive metal involved, as PAFs do, eddy currents cause a low Q. 500k pots are preferred because if the Q drops any lower, the pickup will sound too dull. Strat pickups, which contain no metal aside from the magnets and the wire, have a very high Q, and so the 250k pots help bring their Q down to tolerable levels.

Deciding between 250k and 500k pots depends on the inherent Q of the pickup, and whether you want to increase or decrease it.
 
Re: Tele Pot Choices - 250 or 500k

From the tdpri thread (Thx again Billie) -

"Another easy way to go with say a neck humbucker in a Tele would be to just wire it to the volume pot, but not to the tone pot. Then it would see a net resistance of 250k...but you wouldn't be able to adjust the tone. Seems better to throw a 125k resistor in series instead. "

I think I will try this before I part with my cash.
 
Re: Tele Pot Choices - 250 or 500k

Torana said:
From the tdpri thread (Thx again Billie) -

"Another easy way to go with say a neck humbucker in a Tele would be to just wire it to the volume pot, but not to the tone pot. Then it would see a net resistance of 250k...but you wouldn't be able to adjust the tone. Seems better to throw a 125k resistor in series instead. "

I think I will try this before I part with my cash.
Click to expand...

Happy to help. I looked into it a while back so I know the answer is out there. I'm sure somebody in this forum knows.
 
Re: Tele Pot Choices - 250 or 500k

Clint 55 said:
I like 500k pots way more than 250k. They let the beauty of the guitar and pickups come through. If you need to, just roll off the tone. I'm actually going to try 1 meg pots in my new sss strat.
Click to expand...

Unless it's for restore on an old tele , Clint 55 hit it right for kickin' Tone . I'm Not the kind to stay with the norm on something this Important . When U gotta Gig, Record, Practice and just Kick some butt ~ a 500k pot circuit and the right compatible pickups it's hard to beat.

post #9 is accurate for Theory but in my Years of experience (almost every config on the planet ) all of your other gear helps Determine what goes inside of the Guitars as well , because Theory and such are only relative to a certain point . Each pickup/guitar set-up () oh yes and Tone+cap or not - help me determine the entire picture as well .
 
Re: Tele Pot Choices - 250 or 500k

Welcome to the SD forum!

The jazz is one humbucker that sounds just fine with 250k pots (check out seymour's original tele-gib).
That is what i would do because there a few things finer, more responsive, more articulate, expressive and gutsy in the world than the sound of a true single coil, unadulterated tele bridge pickup. 250k pot is part of this. I'm not a fan of any noiseless singles tho. They take away the noise but they also take away all the really cool juicy organic stuff too. Just my opinon tho. Your plan of a stack would work well too. 500k pots if you go that way.
Otherwise I've had good success in the past using 500k pots and simply wiring in an extra 510k resistor from the switch to the bridge pickup. That works pretty well too and you get a really interesting and unique "in between: sound. I made a stellar sounding tele with a jerry donahue bridge and pearly gates neck using that configuration.
Still, there is a lot to be said for simple, so yeah. I reckon 250k pots all round and a .022uf or even .015uf tone cap is the best place to start.
The price of pots is only a couple of bucks so you can afford to experiment.

ps..the jazz comes with 4 conductor wiring as standard. Worth getting one of those push/pull tone pots so you can add a coil split option on the neck pup. 250ks are going to come in handy for that too.
 
Last edited:
Re: Tele Pot Choices - 250 or 500k

Torana said:
Hi all.
I have a Telecaster with a SD Jazz (humbucker) in the neck position and standard Fender single coil in the bridge. I am looking at updating the wiring and am stuck on which value pots to go with - 250k 0r 500k?
To my mind, the easy way out would be to purchase a SD VINTAGE STACK STK-T3b and use 500k pots.
Does this make sense to anyone and do the stacked SD"s respond better to 250k or 500k pots?
Cheers.
Click to expand...

Why not both?

View attachment 69786

This is a wiring diagram I bodged up a while back for a tone circuit that will switch between Fender and Gibson specs (250k/2.2nF vs 500k/4.7nF). If your tone knob doesn't already pop up, this might be a good excuse.

P.S. - the wiring also includes the "not quite off" mod that avoids adding bass with the tone cut all the way; if you like the stock behavior, just replace the 4.7k resistor with a wire lead.
 
Last edited:
Re: Tele Pot Choices - 250 or 500k

So many people are going with split on a bucker because it is so easy to do (yes, and you can split to either coil). But once you compare the split tone with the parallel tone...well, I won't go back to split, except for a very few specific buckers.
Parallel is a more natural sound with a more even EQ than split, brighter than series but not piercing and thin like split can sometimes be. Parallel is also a more complex tone which generally treats the tonal capabilities of the human ear much better.
 
Re: Tele Pot Choices - 250 or 500k

See, I like split better, but ya like what ya like.

But to the OP, get that Vintage Stack and use 500k pots. Or just experiment with what you have an 500k pots, its easy and cheap!
 
Re: Tele Pot Choices - 250 or 500k

Best off with a 500K. The stacked buckers might sound a bit dark or muddy with 250. All my guitars, humbuckers or single coil (apart from one with a TBX) use 500 k and none are too bright or shrill. Then there's the tone control if things need mellowing a bit.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Re: Tele Pot Choices - 250 or 500k

Great replies and so much knowledge within this forum!

I have decided to take the cheaper way out and try liko's wiring setup. I have an assortment of push/pulls, wiring and standard pots on order.

I agree with the advice of the unmistakable sound of the SC tele bridge at full growl so will hold off on the Stacked Duncan for now.

Thanks Guys.

Best thing I did was to sign up here after years of lurking!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Butch Snyder
New HSS Wiring Harness Help Needed
Replies
3
Views
389
Butch Snyder
Butch Snyder
P
Tele neck pickup (humbucker rout) with JD bridge
Replies
10
Views
204
Artie
Artie
E
Tele wiring with push/pull tone
Replies
0
Views
499
echo8287
E
Rex_Rocker
Technical question(s) about pot values
Replies
14
Views
794
Rex_Rocker
Rex_Rocker
S
Yet another HSH pickguard post
Replies
1
Views
296
Mincer
Mincer
Back
Top