When do you need new pots?

[GuitarsandCats]

Hello all,

Iv decided to take a stab at changing my teles pickups. The guitar is about 18 years old and back then I bought guitars based on how they looked rather than how they sounded :duh:. As it turned out I never was into the tele twang. Its a great guitar, but was a bit too bright and twangy for the type of rock I play. So sadly this guitar has played second fiddle through the years as I played other guitars. I'd like to change that now. After some research I bought the little 59 for the bridge. Still trying to settle on what neck pickup to swap though.

Anyway my question is - do I need to change out the pots to since I am going for pickups with higher output? I have never done this before so its all new to me.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: When do you need new pots?

The Lil 59 for Tele was most likely designed around 250k pots. The only reason you'd need to change pots is if you found the current pots too dark, in which case I'd switch the volume to 500k and if that's too dark turn the tone to 500k as well.

 

[esandes]

Re: When do you need new pots?

Higher resistance pots make for a brighter, higher presence tone. So if the 250k you have are too dark with the new pickups, use higher resistance pots.

Go slow if you have the time. By that I mean try 300, then 500 if you need to. But I doubt you'll need to as it seems like a bright guitar-as teles often tend to be.

 

[Mincer]

Re: When do you need new pots?

Welcome to the forum!

I change the pots when I don't like the taper, or they are too stiff, or there is static that doesn't go away with De-oxit. I don't do it when changing out pickups unless I am going between true single coils and humbuckers.

 

[GuitarDoc]

Re: When do you need new pots?

Pots can take a lot of use/abuse before they "need" to be replaced because they don't work anymore. That being said, in your case going from a single coil Tele pup to a lil 59, I would definitely change the vol pot to a 500k (forget about "going slow", you're not going to hear enough difference between the 250k pot that is in your guitar and a 300k pot). Plus the lil 59 is a much darker sounding pup to the one you are removing anyway.