What load does a humbucker see if...

Rex_Rocker

Rex_Rocker

Well-known member
... if I use a 1 Meg volume and a 500K tone?

Right now I've got the Custom in my LTD. I like it. It just needs some fine-tuning. I wouldn't mind making the Custom a tiny tiny tiny bit more attack-y and aggressive and a tad less thuddy, but not night and day. Just a tad. I know that by raising a higher value pot, the the whole business of the resonant peak and whatnot is going to tilt the EQ a tad more towards the highs, right?

I was thinking about disconnecting the tone knob altogether first. Right now, the guitar has 500K volume pots and a master 500K tone pot. So if I understand this correctly, the pickup is effectlvely seeing the same load as if I was running a single 250K volume, right? So if I disconnect the tone knob, it will see 500K? And how about if I leave the 500K tone and replace the volume with 1 Meg? I think if it sees a value in between 250 and 500, it would be a less steep change that will help me evaluate if I need to remove the tone pot altogether or not.

Thank you.

:)
 
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333.33k ohms. To calculate you just put the two values in parallel. If one value is half the other value, the parallel resistance will always be 1/3 the bigger one. In the case of two equal values, it will be half of either of them. So 500k in parallel with 500k is 250k. Two 1 meg pots will get you a total load of 500k

With two pots, the total load will always be smaller than the smallest pot value. The larger the other pot value, the closer to the smaller pot value the total load will be.
 
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Chistopher said:
333.33k ohms. To calculate you just put the two values in parallel. If one value is half the other value, the parallel resistance will always be 1/3 the bigger one. In the case of two equal values, it will be half of either of them. So 500k in parallel with 500k is 250k for example.
Click to expand...
Gotcha. Thank you.

So basically, yes, it's what I want. A load smaller than 500K, but greater than the 250K it's seeing right now.
 
Rex_Rocker said:
... if I use a 1 Meg volume and a 500K tone?

Right now I've got the Custom in my LTD. I like it. It just needs some fine-tuning. I wouldn't mind making the Custom a tiny tiny tiny bit more attack-y and aggressive and a tad less thuddy, but not night and day. Just a tad. I know that by raising a higher value pot, the the whole business of the resonant peak and whatnot is going to tilt the EQ a tad more towards the highs, right?

I was thinking about disconnecting the tone knob altogether first. Right now, the guitar has 500K volume pots and a master 500K tone pot. So if I understand this correctly, the pickup is effectlvely seeing the same load as if I was running a single 250K volume, right? So if I disconnect the tone knob, it will see 500K? And how about if I leave the 500K tone and replace the volume with 1 Meg? I think if it sees a value in between 250 and 500, it would be a less steep change that will help me evaluate if I need to remove the tone pot altogether or not.

Thank you.

:)
Click to expand...

You could also just swap in a no load tone control. With the control wide open it is out of the circuit, but when not on 10 you get your tone control in the path.

I have two BG Pure 90 bridge pickups. One in an SG Std, the other in an LP Standard. The SG has a regular tone control and the LP has a no load tone control and the effect when the No Load tone control is maxed is exactly what you say you are wanting. The attack is more pronounced, and the sound is definitely more aggressive sounding with the tone knob on 10.
 
Hiwatts and Gibsons said:
You could also just swap in a no load tone control. With the control wide open it is out of the circuit, but when not on 10 you get your tone control in the path.

I have two BG Pure 90 bridge pickups. One in an SG Std, the other in an LP Standard. The SG has a regular tone control and the LP has a no load tone control and the effect when the No Load tone control is maxed is exactly what you say you are wanting. The attack is more pronounced, and the sound is definitely more aggressive sounding with the tone knob on 10.
Click to expand...
I don't really use the tone knob, to be honest, so having a no load tone knob or no tone knob is the same to me. The reason I leave it there, really, is to load down the pickup a little and because it's easier to just leave it than to rewire things to match the load my pickups are seeing right now. :)

beaubrummels said:
If they're both on 10, almost nothing.
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I understand, but I can still hear a difference between 250K, 500K, and 1Meg pots on my other guitars. I figured since I don't need a night and day difference, I could take advantage of the little difference it makes. Especially since the other option I can think of that can give me what I want is changing polepieces, and I'd have to order the polepieces, while I already have the pots. :)​
 
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Aceman said:
A clip of this insufficiently aggressive pup would be helpful.
Click to expand...
Not sure how much would across on clips, TBH. Especially the ones I like to do with quad-tracked boosted high-gain amps. It's more of a feel and/or in-the-room thing. Like, just to indulge myself since I already have the pots and some spare minutes this evening to make the swap. Like I said, I don't need to completely transform the pickup. I like it for the most part. I just want that tiny little extra.
 
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Rex_Rocker said:
Not sure how much would across on clips, TBH. Especially the ones I like to do with quad-tracked boosted high-gain amps. It's more of a feel and/or in-the-room thing.
Click to expand...

Thank you - just looking for the acknowledgement. Carry on.
 
Don't forget about your amp, usually 1Meg, or pedals, can be all over the place, 10K for Fuzzface, 470-500K for Tube Screamer or Rat, up to 10Meg in EQD Plumes, for example. This impedance will also load your pickups, being in parallel with your volume/tone potentiometers.
So, for example, if you play straight into the amp with both 500K pots your pickups will see a 200K load. Change you volume to 1Meg and you will go up to 250K, leave it 500K but cut out the tone and your load will rise up to 333K.
 
Also, if you want to get deep, the load the tone pot presents changes with frequency. At DC, it's infinite, and it goes down as the frequency goes up. I don't know the math to calc what load it is at any specific frequency.
 
htrd said:
Don't forget about your amp, usually 1Meg, or pedals, can be all over the place, 10K for Fuzzface, 470-500K for Tube Screamer or Rat, up to 10Meg in EQD Plumes, for example. This impedance will also load your pickups, being in parallel with your volume/tone potentiometers.
So, for example, if you play straight into the amp with both 500K pots your pickups will see a 200K load. Change you volume to 1Meg and you will go up to 250K, leave it 500K but cut out the tone and your load will rise up to 333K.
Click to expand...

Reducing input impedance to being of the same nature as adding a potentiometer onboard a guitar is highly misleading for the purpose of this thread. A key difference is that a guitar pedal with crappy input impedance is designed with the filters in mind of a specific input impedance, so even though a FF can have an input impedance of up to 10k, it's not "degrading" the signal so much as the circuit was designed to work with a degraded signal. Most pedals have a negligible input impedance of 1m, so they don't have to compensate. It's also worth noting that your instrument only ever sees the first device in your chain's input impedance. Picking on the Fuzz Face again, even though it has a relatively poor output impedance of 2k, this is way better than even the best output impedance you'll get from a passive guitar and is suitable to drive a reasonably long cable with no other buffers as well as negate the input impedance from any number of pedals as well as the amp. A 10k volume pot does not have these advantages.
 
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Chistopher said:
Reducing input impedance to being of the same nature as adding a potentiometer onboard a guitar is highly misleading for the purpose of this thread. A key difference is that a guitar pedal with crappy input impedance is designed with the filters in mind of a specific input impedance, so even though a FF can have an input impedance of up to 10k, it's not "degrading" the signal so much as the circuit was designed to work with a degraded signal. Most pedals have a negligible input impedance of 1m, so they don't have to compensate. It's also worth noting that your instrument only ever sees the first device in your chain's input impedance. Picking on the Fuzz Face again, even though it has a relatively poor output impedance of 2k, this is way better than even the best output impedance you'll get from a passive guitar and is suitable to drive a reasonably long cable with no other buffers as well as negate the input impedance from any number of pedals as well as the amp. A 10k volume pot does not have these advantages.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but I've lost the thread.

All I wanted to notice is that the input impedance of the next device, be it a pedal or an amp, should be counted towards overall pickup load calculations.
 
OK, so I got rid of the tone knob altogether.

I like it! It's still not night and day, and I feared the Custom was going to become super shrill with just a 1 Meg pot, but no! I did get some nice sizzle and raspiness (in a good way), and I feel as a result, the thuddy low-end is a bit less emphasized.

I'm happy. :)
 
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glad you found a way to make it work! i take the tone control off neck pups sometimes when i want a bit more top end
 
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