300K pots compared to 500K

[Armitage]

Gibson uses 350k on their Standards and 500k on their Custom Shops for a reason.

 

[Armitage]

Different pot values and how they affect you!

Humbucker graph shown.

Humbuckers traditionally come with 500k volume and tone pots, wth .022 caps. Single coils traditionally use 250k pots. Remember, pickups were voiced/made to run at these values, changing the value changes their intended tone, (good or bad is an opinion), as well as their output.
The top curve indicates virtually no load, the second curve down indicates a 1meg pot, the third down is a 500k pot, the fourth is a 250k pot and the bottom curve represents a 100k pot. As you can see, higher pots give you more output and raise the resonant peaks output. The resonant peak doesn't shift in frequency, but it does shift in amplitude. The resonant peak frequency of most HBs is around 5k to 7k.
With tone controls (they react differently then volume pots because of the way they're wired in the circuit), a 250k pot is the same as turning your 500k tone pot down to it's resistive mid point (5 on a linear taper pot). Even on 10, a tone pot bleeds high end to ground, but pickups were designed in this circuit in mind, and some people think they sound cold and glassy without a tone pot in the circuit.

If you want to see what it's like to use different value pots, without pulling breakable knobs and changing out your pots, here's a temporary way to see what it's like.

This is how you can hear what going from a 250k to 500k (or even 500k to 1 Meg) volume pot sounds like. Just disconnect the pickups output wire to the pot and put a 250k (or close 240k or 270k), (or to try 1 Meg, 500k or close), resistor in series. It'll sound the same, but you CAN'T turn the volume all the way off, remember this is just a test function. If you like it, go buy the pot.
You can also try doing it to your tone pot as shown. In many guitars with 250k tone pots, I've just left the resistor in permanently; you just can't turn it down as much.

This is how you can hear what going from a 500k pot down to a 250k volume and tone pot sounds like. Just put a 500k (or close, e.g. 510k or 470k) resistor in parallel with the pots outer lugs. You can actually even leave it this way, the only difference will be the volume and tone pots taper (i.e. 10 will be 10, 0 will be 0, but it'll be half as loud at a different place on the knob).

Most people prefer audio pots for volume, and linear pots for tone. Most manufacturers just use audio for all... You use an audio taper for volume because the ear isn't linear with volume.

P.S. if your "or close" value is slightly higher then the pot, the value will be slightly higher on 10 then the actual double, (or halved value) in these circuits. If lower, it'll be slightly lower.

This is how you can hear what going from a 500k pot down to a 250k volume and tone pot sounds like. Just put a 500k (or close, e.g. 510k or 470k) resistor in parallel with the pots outer lugs. You can even leave it this way, the only difference will be the volume and tone pots taper (i.e. 10 will be 10, 0 will be 0, but it'll be half as loud at a different place on the knob).

Most people prefer audio pots for volume, and linear pots for tone. Most manufacturers just use audio for all.

You use an audio for volume because the ear isn't linear with volume.

Expensive pots sound the same as cheap pots as long as they're the correct value (measured value, not the stated value). And changing brands of pots does NOTHING as long as they measure the same. Pots are not capacitive and are not reactive (certainly not in the audio range)... but pots that claim to be a certain value can be 20% off, and that makes a difference, so measure them. Specially if the ones you take out are 20% low and the ones going in are 20% high. Of course quality pots last longer, make less noise when you turn them... and can feel better... but the same exact measured value will sound identical... because it is.

P.S. if your "or close" value is slightly higher then the pot, the value will be slightly higher on 10 then the actual double, (or halved value) in these circuits. If lower, it'll be slightly lower.

 

[MrRhoads]

Expensive pots sound the same as cheap pots as long as they're the correct value (measured value, not the stated value). And changing brands of pots does NOTHING as long as they measure the same.[/COLOR]

Which pots have you compared to come to that conclusion?

 

[weirdotis]

I'm not sure if you are talking about tone or volumn pots here, but I also get better balance using 300k bridge and 500k neck tone RS audio taper pots. I can still get enough high end from my bridge pup. I also use a RS 280k volumn Super Pot.

What works for me certainly doesn't work for everyone I know, but I have tried every conceivable combination and this is the tone I like most.

I was talking about tone pots, I should have specified. How do you like the Superpot? I'm thinking I'm going to do an overhaul of my guitar's electronics this summer and will probably pick up some Superpots.

I think what he was asking is if it's cool to mix the vol & tone for one pickup. Is this correct? if that's what he was asking, I would say no too. And probably what his tech meant. But I believe it's OK to do this: 300k (vol/tone)for your bridge pup and 500k (vol/tone) for your neck pup.

I see what you mean- my bad. I honestly have never thought about this before, but maybe someone with more experience than I will chime in.

 

[guitarcase]

I don't find capacitors make a darn bit of difference. Others will tell you differently. We tried doing comparisons with alligator clips.....ceramics, ODs, Hovlands, Mallorys, etc. Could hear no change in tone. In fact I thikn the stock ceramics are just fine. Some of the best sounding LPs in history were bone stock LPs, with linear volume pots and ceramic canps. The tone of the guitar comes first....pickups are important to. Guitar wood, acoustic, etc come first.

Why linear though I wonder. Whenever I have linear pots they seem to respond slowly to volume roll off. I tend to keep the values all the same in my LPs/SGs but I usually install audio tapers for the bridge pickup - 300Ks. Lately I have been keeping the ceramic disk caps in because I hear no difference.

What make do you use for 300k(for bridge)? I have 500k CTS which are very smooth, but they don't do a 300.

 

[nitrous12]

I just got a new LP Traditional the other day and decided not to drop an RS Kit into it right away like I did on my others. I have a spare 500K audio taper Superpot for the bridge volume and I grabbed a .22 Russian PIO for the bridge and a .15 for the neck from a forum member.
Had a chance to mess around today and did things in smaller pieces this time. Today was the first I was able to open up my Splawn QR with new Trad and I gotta say the stock pups/electronics sounded pretty damn good. I had a Marshall DSL when I first got my other two Trads and did not like the tone of the 57 Classics at all. Different story today....they really weren't bad, but I still hate the damn linear taper volumes.
I dropped the PIOs in first. The difference was immediately noticeable to me. The tone even with everything full on is clearer. And what surprised me the most was that they made the volume controls more useful. W/stock caps I really heard no volume difference until I got to 2ish...now I hear it quicker and the tone when I get down to 2 to 0 is much better. I am not saying it made it as useful as an audio taper pot, but I was really surprised at how just a cap changed the behavior of the volume pot. I am actually going to hold off on swapping the pot. Mainly because I think the control is useful enough now for what I do with it and it is a pain in the balls to pull those plates out I may do it eventually though.
Oh and I tried a WB Hab and a Rio Grande BBQ in the axe. Both are nice and a bit better than the 57 Classic +, but not as much of a drastic difference as I found in past experiences.
Sorry I am a bit off topic, but thought I would chime in w/what I found on the caps since there is some talk about caps in this thread.

 

[davesowden]

personally i have had very good results using 500k for volume and 250k for tone (both audio) with a low value cap. A low value cap-.10 or .15 - does make the tone much more useable to me but its all personal preference. even rolled all the way off it doesn,t turn to mud and at about 5 i tend to get a good half-cocked wah sound.

 

[JJ Blair]

What I hate about 300k pots is that they don't taper properly. Part of what's great about vintage guitars is that if I want to change my tone, and clean it up, or make it dirty, all I need is my volume control. 10 is full blown distortion. 9 is a little less. 8 is pretty clean, etc.

With 300k pots, I need to roll my volume to 4 to clean it up. There's no tonal control. It's horrible. The taper is all wrong.

I only own one modern Gibson, and half a dozen '50s and '60s ones. When I pulled the 300k pots out of the new one and put some 500k CTS pots in, the guitar got so much better in terms of responsiveness. Much happier as a result.

 

[FourT6and2]

I prefer 300k volume pots in my LP Custom. I prefer the darker sound for the music I play with that particular guitar.

 

[JJ Blair]

Personally, if I think it's too bright, I'd rather change the capacitor to a value that gives me the sound I want, and have a pot that tapers properly. In fact, if you're making a traditional passive LPF circuit, you use the shunt capacitor's value to determine your shelf point.

If you've never owned a vintage Gibson, and you're not familiar with being able to change the amount of distortion you have by a slight volume reduction on your axe, do yourself a favor. At 300k, you don't have anywhere near the tonal control that a 500k pot does. Leave those 500s in and change the cap value, if you think it's too bright.

 

[SkunkWorks]

snip

Leave those 500s in and change the cap value, if you think it's too bright.

I'm going to give my personal experience with this and explain why that's not going to work for me...

I want to get the brightest tone I'm ever going to want to use when all my knobs are on 10... that's my starting point. With all my knobs "dimed" and using 500k volume pots I really don't like the click, clack, cluck in the attack or general ice pick-ish-ness on the un-wound strings. Yes, I could turn down my tone pot to counter that but if I need to do that then why put the 500k volume in there in the first place? Like I already said, I want to run everything at 10 and have that be the brightest I'm ever going to want my guitar to be. And changing the cap to a different value isn't going to make a discernible difference to my tone when it's dimed on the knobs. How do I know that? Well, there's already a big clusterfvck of a thread going on right now about this and in the end, the clips that were recently posted were enough proof to me that cap values and materials don't make any difference on 10 that's anyone's going to notice. So if I don't like the brightness that 500k volume pots produce when all knobs are dimed I'm going to want to do something that makes a noticeable change... using the value of 300k on the volume pot that Gibson puts in most of their modern guitars does that... noticeably

I don't want to start another debate here as to whether caps make any humanly discernible alteration to tone on 10... like I said there's already a thread going on about it and all anyone needs to do is go listen to the clips and decide for yourself. Interestingly, the person, who many of you know, who posted those clips and came to the same conclusion as I did also happens to be someone who actually supplies caps to other members here... so why would he be ok with coming to that conclusion? ... because there are still other reasons to use different cap values such as getting a more usable range out of your tone control, or altering the cutoff frequency etc... but changing cap values to counteract the brightness of a 500k volume pot isn't going to work for me... the way I use my tone control. I'm not trying convince anyone that my way is the right way for anyone else... I'm just explaining why this will or won't work for ME in MY particular situation. But I'll bet that most of the guys here that have stated they prefer 300k volume pots know exactly what I'm talking about.

 

[JJ Blair]

I'm not familiar with the other thread. Are they changing the type of cap, or the value of the cap? The value will always make an audible difference, even with the pot opened all the way. That value sets the frequency point of the low pass filter.

Hey, if you dig your tone, that's cool. I'm simply suggesting that being able to control the amount of distortion you have is a really wonderful thing that you might want to try, if you haven't already.

 

[SkunkWorks]

I'm not familiar with the other thread. Are they changing the type of cap, or the value of the cap? The value will always make an audible difference, even with the pot opened all the way. That value sets the frequency point of the low pass filter.

Hey, if you dig your tone, that's cool. I'm simply suggesting that being able to control the amount of distortion you have is a really wonderful thing that you might want to try, if you haven't already.

http://www.mylespaul.com/forums/tonefreaks/76345-de-bunking-myths-about-capacitors.html

The value of the cap is what was being "discussed" Most of what I mentioned in my post is toward the end of the thread... it's pretty long... enter at your own risk! But yeah, there are other reasons to change your cap and I don't think that part of it is really being disputed.

I'd been trying find out for a couple months if different value caps will alter tone on 10 and jonesy pretty much showed me that, practically speaking, it won't - even if theoretically it should. Anyway, I got what I needed out of it... I think I'm done with it. In fact, we've started talking about chocolate instead

I've got some different value orange drops kickin' around here somewhere that I might stick in at some point just to see what they do to the usable range of my tone controls which I don't really have an issue with in my Lesters anyway. But I WAS having that brightness issue I discussed in a recently purchased LP Standard that I though was all stock... but I opened the cavity to double check and noticed the bridge volume pot looked a bit shinier than the other 3 and when I checked the pot code I saw that the previous owner had swapped it from the stock 300k to a 500k. I put a spare 300k I had (I've learned to keep them on hand!) back in there and problem solved.

 

[JJ Blair]

Well, what you are hearing, that may be what's bugging you, might be too far below the pivot point of what values are used. If you had an EQ handy, and were able to figure out what frequency point you needed, then you could do the math and figure out what cap value you need. But hey, if what you have is working for you, that's the most important thing!

 

[slowpokerhino]

FWIW, I use a 500k Audio for the neck (.015 PIO cap) and a 300k Audio for the bridge (.022 PIO). 500k linear for the tones, though I may change the bridge tone to 300k since I always run it below half anyway.
Works for me.

 

[korus]

As I see it (primarily for the bridge, 90% of people playing LPs use only bridge pickup anyway, right?) :

using 300k for volume pot with PAF type (e.g. 7-10k) pickup is muddying
using 500k for volume pot with high gain (e.g. >14k) pickup is piercing

So, my guess is that Gibson used/uses 300k pots for Gibson USA guitars since they have some non-PAF/high gain pickups, and used 500k in 50s/60s and in Custom/Historic production since there are only PAF type pickups.

 

[FourT6and2]

As I see it (primarily for the bridge, 90% of people playing LPs use only bridge pickup anyway, right?) :

using 300k for volume pot with PAF type (e.g. 7-10k) pickup is muddying
using 500k for volume pot with high gain (e.g. >14k) pickup is piercing

So, my guess is that Gibson used/uses 300k pots for Gibson USA guitars since they have some non-PAF/high gain pickups, and used 500k in 50s/60s and in Custom/Historic production since there are only PAF type pickups.

I have 300k volume pots and a Duncan JB, which is over 14k, I think. Sounds great to me. But, then again I play high-gain stuff like prog rock and metal, not blues...

 

[SkunkWorks]

I have 300k volume pots and a Duncan JB, which is over 14k, I think. Sounds great to me. But, then again I play high-gain stuff like prog rock and metal, not blues...

Yeah I use 300k for any humbuckers no matter what the output. I like the more modern smooth attack for the modern stuff I do which isn't even necessarily high gain. 500k volumes start to approach the sound of the attack of single coils to me which I can't stand... in a Gibson I mean... that's what Fenders are for

 

[FourT6and2]

Yeah I use 300k for any humbuckers no matter what the output. I like the more modern smooth attack for the modern stuff I do which isn't even necessarily high gain. 500k volumes start to approach the sound of the attack of single coils to me which I can't stand... in a Gibson I mean... that's what Fenders are for

It's weird, because my PRS Singlecut has 500k pots stock. And it doesn't sound overly bright at all. But, different pickups and I play different types of music on each guitar. So, meh. It's not exactly a huge difference between the two, either.

 

[richedie]

Personally, if I think it's too bright, I'd rather change the capacitor to a value that gives me the sound I want, and have a pot that tapers properly. In fact, if you're making a traditional passive LPF circuit, you use the shunt capacitor's value to determine your shelf point.

If you've never owned a vintage Gibson, and you're not familiar with being able to change the amount of distortion you have by a slight volume reduction on your axe, do yourself a favor. At 300k, you don't have anywhere near the tonal control that a 500k pot does. Leave those 500s in and change the cap value, if you think it's too bright.

Better yet, leave the 500K pots in and use the tone control.

As much as I have liked 300K volume pots for the bridge I am starting to like the contorl I get with 500K in the bridge. Might even swap my SG which is bright....to a 300K. Only thing that sucks with my SG is it uses a shared tone control for bridge and neck...so for that reason I MAY keep it as a 300K bridge volume.

I will agree in most guitars 500Ks all around give more versatility. For example, in a Les Paul where you have two tones and two volumes, you have a lot more options and as some have said, better control over the volume in terms of distortion which is huge to me. We are also playing more clean songs where we play clean from start to end of song, I use the middle position and dime the tone controls, I like this almost Fender clean so I need 500Ks for this. For that reason....I recently switched to 500Ks in my LP even in the bridge....I just roll back the tone for the higher gain smooth type stuff.

SG might still remaing 300K in the bridge because the guitar is already bright.