Strat Neck Pickup on a 500K Volume Pot

jaymenon

How would you compensate with a tone control to take the brightness off a Strat neck pickup on a 500K volume pot. 

The neck pickup has its dedicated tone control.

Obviously you’d roll the tone down, but would you use a larger cap like 47nf? Or higher?

jellybelly

How come you're using a 500k pot in the first place? Bigger cap will cut more highs as the tone rolls down. 

Edit: I think it's that way around anyway!)

ICBM

jaymenon said:

How would you compensate with a tone control to take the brightness off a Strat neck pickup on a 500K volume pot. 

The neck pickup has its dedicated tone control.

Obviously you’d roll the tone down, but would you use a larger cap like 47nf? Or higher?

By adding a 470K resistor from the hot to ground on the control, to give an effective 250K volume control.

It's the loading you really need to change, not the cap value - which makes almost no difference when the control is up full.

jellybelly said:

Bigger cap will cut more highs as the tone rolls down.

No, all cap values remove highs - a bigger cap will extend the cut further down into the midrange.

jaymenon

ICBM said:

jaymenon said:

How would you compensate with a tone control to take the brightness off a Strat neck pickup on a 500K volume pot. 

The neck pickup has its dedicated tone control.

Obviously you’d roll the tone down, but would you use a larger cap like 47nf? Or higher?

By adding a 470K resistor from the hot to ground on the control, to give an effective 250K volume control.

It's the loading you really need to change, not the cap value - which makes almost no difference when the control is up full.

Thanks John - I was hoping to avoid soldering a 470K resistor :-) but it looks like I’ll have to get into the fiddly business of soldering it...

ICBM

jaymenon said:

Thanks John - I was hoping to avoid soldering a 470K resistor :-) but it looks like I’ll have to get into the fiddly business of soldering it...

Look on the bright side, I'm still making excuses as to why I shouldn't fit one of those push-push pots in my PRS Hollowbody .

Kittyfrisk

jaymenon said:

ICBM said:

jaymenon said:

How would you compensate with a tone control to take the brightness off a Strat neck pickup on a 500K volume pot. 

The neck pickup has its dedicated tone control.

Obviously you’d roll the tone down, but would you use a larger cap like 47nf? Or higher?

By adding a 470K resistor from the hot to ground on the control, to give an effective 250K volume control.

It's the loading you really need to change, not the cap value - which makes almost no difference when the control is up full.

Thanks John - I was hoping to avoid soldering a 470K resistor :-) but it looks like I’ll have to get into the fiddly business of soldering it...

Have you tried 2 miniature needle nosed alligator/crocodile clips with the resistor attached, clipped between hot to ground on the control, to see what the likely effects are before soldering ?
I used a setup like this to trial a variety of resistor values without soldering until I found the result I was after.

thegummy

ICBM said:

jaymenon said:

Thanks John - I was hoping to avoid soldering a 470K resistor :-) but it looks like I’ll have to get into the fiddly business of soldering it...

Look on the bright side, I'm still making excuses as to why I shouldn't fit one of those push-push pots in my PRS Hollowbody .

Cause they leave the knob sticking out a bit from the body which is uggo?

thegummy

jaymenon said:

ICBM said:

jaymenon said:

How would you compensate with a tone control to take the brightness off a Strat neck pickup on a 500K volume pot. 

The neck pickup has its dedicated tone control.

Obviously you’d roll the tone down, but would you use a larger cap like 47nf? Or higher?

By adding a 470K resistor from the hot to ground on the control, to give an effective 250K volume control.

It's the loading you really need to change, not the cap value - which makes almost no difference when the control is up full.

Thanks John - I was hoping to avoid soldering a 470K resistor :-) but it looks like I’ll have to get into the fiddly business of soldering it...

You could always just use a 250k pot, they're only a few quid.

jaymenon

It’s a HSS set up. I need the 500K pot for the bridge humbucker...

victorludorum

What humbucker is it?

ICBM

thegummy said:

Cause they leave the knob sticking out a bit from the body which is uggo?

No, these ones don't - they're CTS if it matters. It's more the faff of getting all the electrics out of it again .

So I do sympathise with jaymenon...

TTBZ

This might be useful..

thegummy

jaymenon said:

It’s a HSS set up. I need the 500K pot for the bridge humbucker...

Ah right, I've had that setup before and it worked really well.

It's very simple to add it in, I wouldn't worry about it.

thegummy

ICBM said:

thegummy said:

Cause they leave the knob sticking out a bit from the body which is uggo?

No, these ones don't - they're CTS if it matters. It's more the faff of getting all the electrics out of it again .

So I do sympathise with jaymenon...

If it's any help I was considering starting a thread asking if anyone has added mods or options to their guitars and actually use them/care about them in the long term.

I've had various switches and setups; at the moment my Strat has a switch for the tap on the Diamond Geezer bridge pickup and a knob to get the neck+middle sound but to be honest, as much as I do like that sound, it's a bit too many choices and there's pretty much never been a time where I'd really care about having that over neck+middle. And with the pickup, I pretty much always use the full signal for bridge only and the tapped output for the middle+bridge setting.

So was wondering if others feel the same and generally end up ignoring the options or do some people use them all the time. Maybe if you've had a similar experience to me before it might be a reason not to bother doing this mod?

TTBZ

I've found I never really mess with the options, I'd rather just take it as-is most of the time. My bridge pickup does split well but I rarely use the sound. I've had an Oil City Wapping Wharf and BKP Pig 90 which both had a tap as well, but I pretty much just kept it in full all the time anyway.

ICBM

thegummy said:

If it's any help I was considering starting a thread asking if anyone has added mods or options to their guitars and actually use them/care about them in the long term.

I've had various switches and setups; at the moment my Strat has a switch for the tap on the Diamond Geezer bridge pickup and a knob to get the neck+middle sound but to be honest, as much as I do like that sound, it's a bit too many choices and there's pretty much never been a time where I'd really care about having that over neck+middle. And with the pickup, I pretty much always use the full signal for bridge only and the tapped output for the middle+bridge setting.

So was wondering if others feel the same and generally end up ignoring the options or do some people use them all the time. Maybe if you've had a similar experience to me before it might be a reason not to bother doing this mod?

I rarely use more than five or six sounds on one guitar - after that you start to get to the point where they're not very distinguishable, unless they're radically different and only borderline usable.

That said my most recent acquisition has twelve sounds, and cutting down to only six would involve losing a couple of the best ones, so at least for now it can stay with all twelve - it helps that they're very easy to find from the control settings.

jaymenon's question is a bit different since it's just to optimise the sound of what's there already.

Yamaha77

How about a 300k pot? Might be enough to attenuate highs?

ICBM

Yamaha77 said:

How about a 300k pot? Might be enough to attenuate highs?

I think replacing a volume pot is more of a hassle than adding a resistor to a tone pot .

There’s not a huge difference between 250K and 300K anyway.

jaymenon

Does it matter if it’s a 510K resistor rather than a 470K?

ICBM

jaymenon said:

Does it matter if it’s a 510K resistor rather than a 470K?

No, if anything that’s closer to giving an accurate 250K. It’s actually better, just a rarer value since it’s not in the E6 or E12 series of standard values, you need to go to E24.

jaymenon

This one John...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/223568976470