master volume, master tone? id start with 250k. taper is preference as much as anything else but most people prefer audio taper
putting a custom pearly gate bridge in my tele. the neck is a single pup.
i'm redoing the wiring controls and wanted to get feedback on what type of pots, vol & tone. since i have the pearly gate would that require a 500k or 250k? audio type for both i'm assuming.
500k, if you want it to sound Gibsonish. 250k in a Tele is more for the brighter single coils that traditionally come stock. The covers on Tele neck pickups sometimes make them sound dark, a 500k pot might improve the neck sound as well.
It depends a lot on what you have as a neck pup. Like Pico said, some Tele neck pups sound pretty dark and could use a bit more brightness from a 500k vol pot. And even though the PG is pretty bright sounding (esp for an A2 pup) I still like it better with a 500k pot. But really, that's a pup where you could go either way...500k or 250k so it all comes down to the neck pup and how you want it to sound.
your suggestion of 500k is more for the pearly gate the pearly gate i got is like a mini-humbucker single-coil size just so we're on the same page. no offense if you knew that. the neck pup neck is ~9.5k, alnico 5, rw/rp, more on the warmer/fattish side at least with the 250k pot in there now.
I haven't used one myself, but I've read here that the SD single coil sized humbuckers are wound to work with 250k pots. Since you've already got that in your tele, I'd definitely try it first and then change it to 500k if you don't like it.
OK, I goofed. I didn't see/read your post that said it with the single-coil-sized PG. Those, imo, are not as bright as their big brother so my recommendation would definitely be to try the 500k pot first. I really think you'll like it enough to not even want to try it with the 250k pot.
I didnt know you were talking about the single coil sized version, but I would recommend 500k pots for that as well. I own a set, not currently installed, so I speak from experience, but also I don't really believe the claim that they were designed to work with 250k pots. I know enough about how pickups work to feel confident that there is nothing about their design that makes them especially suited to 250k pots. They don't have a high Q factor, its as simple as that.
ok, duly noted. i'm going to try both. the 250k is there already, then i'll try the 500k. btw, what is a "high Q factor"?
When you switch between 500k and 250k pots, it's all about the Q factor, and nothing but. It's related to the concept of resonance, which guitar pickups have. Eddy currents in the metal parts of a pickup cause the Q to become lower.
Higher Q factor = more treble at a particular frequency bad, not an overall increase in treble. The reason people usually don't like 1 meg pots is because they punch up a particular frequency band too much. The lower value the pot, the more it lowers the Q. Fender single coils have a high Q, so they pair with 250k pots. Humbuckers have a lower Q, so they pair better with 500k pots. If a pickup has a very low Q, a 1 meg pot might be called for. A little humbucker has about the same Q as a larger humbucker, because they both use steel parts, where as a Fender single coil that you are replacing is just made up of AlNiCo, wire and inert materials.
I haven't used one myself, but I've read here that the SD single coil sized humbuckers are wound to work with 250k pots. Since you've already got that in your tele, I'd definitely try it first and then change it to 500k if you don't like it.
Glad to hear that you're going to try different pots.
On some builds we've included a parallel resistor to make 500k pot see 250. And a few times we have put that resistor on a push poll so that you can get both sounds.
Probably more than you want to deal with but glad you thinking pot values.
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