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View Full Version : Making a homemade no load pot



tonyw
20-02-2016, 03:12 AM
I like no load pots, they take all the load off your pickup when full on, giving you just your nice clean pickup sound.

Heres how i do it.

Pull the tabs back on the pot
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Pull the pot apart, it comes apart easy
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Scrape some of the carbon from the left side of the sweeper as marked
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Wire into the tone control on your harness your choice which one or all
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You can make one for your volume, it will mean at 10 you have no sound at all, i have a mod to get around this but i dont see the point, the low resistance load to the pickup will damp the electrical resonance and result in a lot of treble loss at lower volume setting :cool:

fender3x
20-02-2016, 05:03 AM
Cool mod! Also that is one very tidy wiring harness!

Another easy mod on a CTS pot ;-)

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tonyw
20-02-2016, 05:54 AM
I pride my self on my wiring, if it looks a bit rough i hate it, but others dont notice, i sort of had to get over them not being perfect or i would be there a week on 1 harness.

Heres where the harness went, my project strat.

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fender3x
20-02-2016, 06:29 AM
Wow, that is really pretty!

Note to self: Don't post pic of your G&L bass harness where Tonyw can see it ;-)

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tonyw
20-02-2016, 06:55 AM
Wow, that is really pretty!

Note to self: Don't post pic of your G&L bass harness where Tonyw can see it ;-)

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I have had alot and i mean alot of baaaad harnessing on my desk to repair or redo, i have even thrown one in the bin recently that a young bloke had tried his luck on, and destroyed everything.

Its not something you can see, but it can get you alot of inherent problems.

fender3x
20-02-2016, 07:08 AM
True that! I spent a week looking for what turned out to be a bad ground on my G&L.

It's not that it's bad in there, so much as its complex and had to fit twice as much stuff as it was deigned for. Once I got it right it, it looked a bit like a birds nest--but it fit just barely. So I closed the cavity and hoped I would not need to open it for a long time. I color coded all the wires, and have the wiring planned saved, but I pity anyone who might need to make sense of it.

Gives me lots of choices of sounds, but pretty it ain't.

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tonyw
20-02-2016, 07:33 AM
I installed the wiring from hell in my Baritone, including a Tonestyler pot 4 way switchetc , took me ages to get it right.

About 2 months ago i ripped it all out and installed a no load tone pot in the bridge, a new 500k pot on the neck and a 3 way switch, made it much less complicated, but i still have pics of all the wiring that went in, just incase i decided to go again.

Preferring simplicity these days, buuut i am working on a tele (carbronita style) with a TV Jones Powertron plus bridge, lets see how may tones i can get out of this unit.
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fender3x
20-02-2016, 09:14 AM
There is a similarity in how ny G&L mod got started. I read about humbucking and single coil mods, some models added caps, others left them out... I couldn't decide which I wanted...so I put them all in. If I were to re do it, it would be much simpler. That said, tho, if I had initially gone for something simpler, it would not have course to me put in the settings ended up liking best.

Meanwhile on my Frankenjazz bass, I put in a bunch of switching options only to learn that I didn't like any of the new sounds they produced. If I redo that one it'll be way simpler.

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fender3x
20-02-2016, 09:16 AM
That cabronita tele is a beaut, BTW

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tonyw
20-02-2016, 09:54 AM
its my next build after this junior turns up i am doing.