Trim pots in a guitar?

[mudpuppy]

I was just thinking the other day that I like a lot of flexability in a guitar. I'm pretty much entirely a home studio guy, and can spend a lot of time twiddling controls to get the tone I want for recording. I have become very interested lately in trying things like spin-a-splits and dial-a-taps. I also figure that there are adjustments that I can 'set & forget', or change rarely. I also don't necessarily want to start adding so many knobs on a guitar that it starts looking more like a mixing board! It seems obvious that one solution would be trim pots for controls that are rarely adjusted. These would require only 1/16" - 1/8" holes to be drilled and adjusted with a small screwdriver: In the pick-guard for front-routed guitars and (!!!) in the control cavity cover for rear routed.

Does this seem like a good idea?

 

[mudpuppy]

Re: Trim pots in a guitar?

^ good point. if a split or tap is only going to be adjusted at initial setup, a simple resistor of the right value would be best for sound quality. Don't know if trim pots would necessarily degrade sound, or what range of qualities are available. I suppose I could experiment by wiring the things in loose before drilling holes. What I would really like to know is exactly what makes a CTS pot sound better than an asian. I don't mean reasons like 'better materials' or 'better workmanship' or 'tighter spec'. I mean specifics on physical or electrical characteristics.

I'm actually not convinced that 'smaller' necessarily translates into 'lower quality'. A smaller component might be expected to be more of a 'pure resistance', with less parallel capacitance and series inductance.

 

[sosomething]

Re: Trim pots in a guitar?

I've often toyed with the notion of putting a trim pot on a 3-way switch and wiring it up so that it switches to a pre-set volume drop, thusly

1. Full on
2. Cleaned up
3. mute