EXACTLY

Things like potentiometers, capacitors and tone wood make an incredible amount of difference in the tone of one's guitar...in one's own head.

Haha, yeah. And if people focused on writing good songs as much as they practice playing guitar we'd have some really amazing music!

Hey! Tone obsession is a great obsession! But it's like vynal vs digital or solid state vs tube. Important stuff man!

True man true. I personally prefer Emerson pots and caps, just because of the looks. They really add detail and depth to the cavity.

LOL! Yeah, I had never heard of "matched pots" either. That is funny. Just another weird snake oil opportunity.

Me

I get people preferring 1 Meg, 250k, or 500k pots as well as the kind of taper for specific guitars, though people shouldn’t obsess over it. But damn, matched pots? I didn’t know that was a thing either.

All means more or less to different people. There's so many people on the internet nowadays that are saying tonewood makes no difference in guitar building which is the biggest load of crap in all of guitar building history.

@@timstudio1.... you are SO Right, about the tonal & sustain qualities of various woods in building ANY stringed instrument. The possibilities and variations are as endless as all the various wood types that are on the planet. People who say "the wood make no, or negligible difference" in tonal (and sustain) qualities.... know nothing, or... extremely little about the subject.

Anderson uses Alpha. The taper and friction is perfect.

I was CTS fan, now I prefer brass Alpha, smooth and fit 8mm hole in export guitar bodies. Anyway these days CTS are made in Taiwan.

I like Bourns, as they are smooth and attractively finished. But Alphas work just as well. Who cares? But CTS always seem to be priced at a premium.

algreen1231 Must check out those brass Alphas.

Bournes or Alpha ( normally marketed as Taiwan Alpha ) as both produce a true log pot if you want to pay the price but the multiple slope Log A are good enough . My local warehouse stocks Alpha at great prices , RS carry Bourns here in the UK . Alpha are common in most amps too . You can buy conductive plastic by Omeg or Pfier but these are much more expensive and would you want to see a small green plastic square in your guitar despite being aerospace quality ? I have made a mini amp using these. 16mm Alpha round great for new custom builds where you don't want large cavities and covers , you don't need a 1 inch pot in there any more and stick to the 2 brands and you will have no problems whatsoever. You can, with a little practice mod the pot slopes by thinning the carbon tracks after disassembly. So if your amp design calls for a 2M2 and you have only 1 Meg pots gently with very fine emery paper brush the track until it does its thing up to 2Meg or so .You can also cut and remove part of the track if you want it to do a certain job like cut volume at max , instead of using a switch .

What about reverse log too. I've only ever seen them on boost circuits in audio applications but they are still a thing!

In most cases, cheap pots and electronics will be fine. I have experienced a faulty switch that needed to be replaced on my budget guitar. If you’re constantly gigging, then in my opinion you could change the electronics just for peace of mind

​@@ramencurry6672totally!

Do you know how that "comparison" videos has been made? You really believe them? "Oh, yeah, everything is same, just pots and caps are changed". Of course that those elements can make a difference, but with value change, not a brand. And always, and I mean 100% always, the biggest difference makes a player. A good player can use a baseball bat and still sound good and make better music than, for instance, me, even on most expensive equipment.

My budget guitar has Mighty Might brand potentiometers. I think it’s owned by Cort guitars. It works fine. No need to change it.

It’s all in where you put your focus.... are you having a pissing match over capacitors, or are you making music?

PastelComGini Yep. My Alpha pot feels and works great. I need to have a volume pot because I tend to play extremely loud and need it to reduce the signal when I’m not playing or I feedback like crazy. Plus I back off the volume pot for my “cleaner” sound. But when I want to bypass it completely, I just hit the blower switch I wired up.

More than likely man, manufacturing of these types of small components isn't really something that's stayed in the west, most companies have shifted production to china to cut costs, and at this point, I'd suppose there's no real point in a small company starting production of those components domestically. Even companies like Pure Tone, who make that great multi-contact 1/4" jack, that's more than likely just a design they have made by an overseas production facility.

He says it with tongues.

People will say since the signal still travels through it when fully open and some signal will “leak” off, mostly high end(something about capacitance). 250k will leak off more than a 500k. That’s why single coils usually get 250k to loose some of the shrill high end. You don’t want to loose it in a humbucker since it will sound muddy. Is any of that true? I’ve never cared to test it. Honestly people just do whatever tradition is and hate change. Do people actually think everything Leo Fender did in the 1950s was perfect and no improvements have ever been made? Well Leo didn’t and constantly made changes up until he sold it in1965.

It's a passive circuit (unless you have active electronics...well Duh!) soooo... in the simplest case, with just a volume pot, you have the output of the pickup connected to one end of, say a 500k resistor. That is ALWAYS in circuit, even when the volume is all the way up There is (theoretically) 0 ohms between the output of the pickup and the output jack. BUT that 500k resistance of the pot is always across the output. That is the crucial part. So, depending of course on the output impedance (and we are always talking impedance, as the signal is an AC waveform) that means there is always a load across the pickup. This means that there is an interaction with the pot and the pickup coil. This explains why a 500k pot loads the pickup less, and because of the physics of impedance matching, means a brighter tone (i.e. LESS high frequency loss) which suits the darker sound of a humbucker. A 100k load will tend to reduce the top end, which works well with single coil pickups as they tend to be brighter in tone. A 1 Mohm pot would load the pickup less, and a 50K would load it more. The toe control is a bit different. It uses the capacitor to shunt higher frequencies to ground, via the control pot. That still means there is a load on the pickup, but this is mitigated by the capacitor. Remember a capacitor is a DC block (ideally) and depending on the impedance of the circuitry will allow increasing amounts of electricity through, as the frequency of the signal increases. It's a bit more complicated than that, but in essence that's how it works. The most crucial part of the tone circuit is the value of the capacitor, dependent on the pickup and the value of the tone pot. And buying an inordinately expensive hand made oil and paper capacitor is a complete waste of money.

@@johnmorrison5502 "Do people actually think everything Leo Fender did in the 1950s was perfect and no improvements have ever been made?" Well yes. Many do. And they are wrong. Those guitars were made to be cheap to manufacture, and assembled by semi-skilled labour. The fact that many mythologizes them is a different matter. Many guitarists seem to believe in "magic".

THERES 1 for fact

Of course the pot values changes the tone but no one says that exactly 250k is the best for singles and 500k for humbuckers. It's all personel preference.

I’ve got a set in a double cut special wired 50s. I really like them. Smooth, easy turns and roll down the P90s nicely. I did have to replace one though cuz I replaced the knobs and one was so tight that I pulled out the whole shaft from the pot. Probly would have happened to any brand. Short of that they feel like they’ll last forever.

Try using 300k pots

We live in a 38 foot Georgetown XL full time

Awesome RV, 'A' class looks like. How do you guys like it & how long full-time RV'ing? This is something my wife, Deb, & I are planning on the future. We were full time musicians traveling, but not in a RV, we'd sleep at Truck stops in our car, not comfortable, LOL!!! Stay safe my friend, Rock On & God Bless!!!

If all is okay then you shouldn't have that result. I am certain something wrong, most likely with the wiring.

Pints of Guinness No potentiometer value or taper would cause the problems you describe. A bad soldier job definitely could, and a grossly defective pot could as well. For future reference, make a diagram before replacing any components or wiring. It is very easy to get even the super simple wiring of a guitar wrong. Take a few close up photos and make some notes before removing parts.

Linear taper is usually used for tone and logarithmic or "audio" taper for volume pots. Most people use either for volume, depending on haow they want the taper to work, but almost everyone uses linear for tone. Using audio pots for tone can give you a weird taper where the pot does nothing at all, and then suddenly has it's entire effect in the last 1/4 turn or something

@@ashscott6068 as I'm pretty unhappy with the logarithmic/audio taper for the tone pots, I guess linear tone pots are a good advice.

AND for the matter as I find this with newer pots, its the crimp on the end terminals as its a mechanical connection to the trace that is the resistance of the pot in the guts. The terminals are not soldered or fused in some way with a bond....its just a mechanical contact connection which is the worst for an electronic connection. I find the connections getting crappier as time goes on. I really didn't have any issues in the past as for the integrity of parts, but these days......I have to test everything as it will affect the performance of my work in the end result as the summation.......you used to be able to blindly trust parts and parts suppliers. I might venture that there might be a situation of the trace and its thickness as its layed down as a contact track and with anything else and the penny pinchers trying to cut costs....they might be going to a lighter trace. The circuit boards tend to have 3 levels concerning the thickness as in depth of the traces.....other than their layed out width. SO circuit boards and the conductive action/function of the circuit traces is not quite equivalent to actual copper wire and a wires thickness as for gauge. If you were to take a particular gauge of wire used in old style construction of something electronic....and took that wire and rolled it flat to a circuit board thickness......imagine how wide that piece of copper wired being flattened would be in relation to a trace on a circuit board.