Es-335 - specific years 300k tone pots fitted?

noisepolluter

I have a 2007 Gibson es-335 and am trying to work out if Tone pots are 300k or 500k without loosening one which I have no intention of doing!

The fretboard might need a quick once-over at some point soon so while it’s in the workshop I was wondering about gettting 50’s wiring (and 500k pots/treble pass cap etc) as I usually run the volumes low and the tones (especially neck) right up. 

ICBM

The tone pots are always 500K - it's the volume pots which are often 300K (linear) on modern Gibsons.

You can measure the value of the volume pots without taking them out of the guitar, with a little maths...

Connect a cable to the guitar and meter across the other end of it. Select one pickup, and turn its volume to zero - the reading should be 0 ohms. Now turn the knob up slowly, while watching the reading. It will peak at about 5 on the knob (linear pot) or 7-8 (log pot) and then fall to the DC resistance of the pickup, typically 8Kohms or so. Take the peak reading, multiply by four, subtract the pickup resistance and that's the value of the pot.

You can't easily measure the tone pot value from outside the guitar without some complicated test equipment.

50s wiring doesn't work well with a treble pass cap - you need one or the other.

p90fool

Yep, I tend to use 50s wiring on the bridge pickup and a 470pf treble pass cap with modern wiring on the neck pickup.  

You can try both with your existing pots, after automatically fitting 500k pots because it's the "done thing" I've reverted to 250 or 300k log pots on everything. 

It sounds sweeter if you have bright-ish amps and the loss of treble when you roll the volume is less pronounced than with 500k.