Blend pot...

[corsair]

Okey dokey... so this isn't a PBG, but Andy has supplied me a set of Toneriders for my Strat and rather than just do a standard fit out, I've read about installing a blend pot in the 2nd Tone spot to get the bridge + neck pickup combo happening and thought "That sounds like a good idea!"

Has anyone done this? And what exactly is the blend pot? I know nothing about them....

Cheers, chaps and chapesses..

John

[Richy17]

I’ve done it on a strat. You can get the Tele middle position sound pretty easily. I ended up taking it out because I kept getting side tracked fiddling with it and not actually playing 😂

[brisboy]

A blend pot is also called a balance pot sometimes. Two potentiometers stacked with a shared centre post. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong).

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[corsair]

. Two potentiometers stacked with a shared centre post.

That's what I thought, too, but I've seen a Fralin pot that is a single gang so I'm all at sea at the moment! And do I need to use "no load" pot for the blend and master tone?!

Anyone?!

[WeirdBits]

A Balance/Blend circuit uses a stacked centre-detent pot, essentially two opposite pots in one unit. Both halves (A and B) are on full in the middle, turn it one way and A stays full while B reduces, turn the other way and B is full while A reduces. This allows you to balance the sound/volume from two pickups.

What Corsair is asking about is a blender circuit, where a standard volume pot connects a pickup into the circuit allowing you to 'blend in' as much or as little as you like from that pickup. Doing it on a Strat allows bridge plus neck Tele combos, or blends it with the middle, or all thee pups. Here's a layout (https://guitarelectronics.com/wdu-sss5l21-01/) that uses a push/pull to swap the neck tone to a neck blender:

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When the push/pull is down it acts as a normal tone for the neck, but pull it up and it swaps to being a blender for the neck. Then you can have bridge + neck, bridge + middle + neck, middle with a touch of neck etc.

There are different layouts you can use, depending on what you want. One option is a master volume, master tone and a permanent blender pot, or something similar, which sounds like what Corsair is wanting. A 'No Load' pot allows a permanent blender to be taken out of the circuit without needing a switch, turning it all the way essentially disconnects it.

[corsair]

Thanks, Scott; yeah, that last is what I was thinking. So, a no load, A taper pot for a blend control and a standard B taper for the master tone with its attendant cap, which is something else I'm gonna have a play with, although my reading would indicate that a no load pot there could be benficial as well, by removing it from the circuit and allowing just the capacitor to work on sound shaping!! Thought I might put in a treble bleed as well...

[Bakersdozen]

You can modify a standard pot into a no load pot fairly easily...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IQ8gS1PEO8&t=7s

[Simon Barden]

Except I'd scrape the track at the other end, so 10 on the dial would be no load and maximum brightness, then at 9 the pot would kick in with maximum resistance (so normal max brightness) and 0 is then your normal max dullness.

Of course, proper no-load pots have the full pot resistance at the 9 position, whereas when making your own like in the video, you are loosing some of that resistance. So the 9 position on a home-made pot will sound a bit duller than 9 on a bought no-load pot.

[Bakersdozen]

Except I'd scrape the track at the other end, so 10 on the dial would be no load and maximum brightness, then at 9 the pot would kick in with maximum resistance (so normal max brightness) and 0 is then your normal max dullness.

Of course, proper no-load pots have the full pot resistance at the 9 position, whereas when making your own like in the video, you are loosing some of that resistance. So the 9 position on a home-made pot will sound a bit duller than 9 on a bought no-load pot.Thanks Simon, that's good to know.

[fender3x]

Of course, proper no-load pots have the full pot resistance at the 9 position, whereas when making your own like in the video, you are loosing some of that resistance. So the 9 position on a home-made pot will sound a bit duller than 9 on a bought no-load pot.

So I was thinking maybe you should scrape a pot with a little higher value, like a 300K instead of a 250K. So I looked on eBay and realized that no load pots are no more expensive than any other decent pot....

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[corsair]

I think I'll just buy 'em and be done with it, lads, eh!!

So... I need two Emerson 'no load' tone pots, yes? 1 for the blend circuit and one for my new master tone? And a selection of capacitors...

This could be interesting, eh!

[Simon Barden]

But if you were stuck on a desert island with just an electric guitar, an amp, a generator with fuel for many years, some pliers, a knife some spanners, and you suddenly felt that your sound would benefit from some extra brightness, then you now know what to do!

[Bakersdozen]

Here's a bit clearer vid.
https://youtu.be/dN3SlH-cEAg
Simon, just reading your post, what do you mean about scraping the other side of the track? Obviously not the 0 side, so I'm a little confused.

[Simon Barden]

The way he scraped it in that first video, you'd have to turn the knob to 0 to get no-load brightness, then 1 would be maximum dullness, with normal full brightness at 10. So if you want a more logical 10 for no load brightness, then you'd scrape the other end of the pot track.

[fender3x]

It takes a lot of planning to get shipwrecked with all that gear. Still, I was a little surprised to see how cheaply you could get a no-load pot. It makes sense, since they are no harder to manufacture than any other pot. That did not stop the mfgs from charging a premium for them. Must be that they needed to compete with DIY and video such as that, so they brought the price down to where it should be.

Speaking of which... I don't see anything special about the Emerson pots except the stamp on the bottom. The case and what you can see of the wafer looks exactly like a CTS. It's not sealed or anything and uses the same type of carbon-stamp wafer... I would be willing to bet that Emerson just ordered a bunch of them from CTS with the their stamp, the way that Fender has done from time to time. Nothing wrong with that, unless you pay extra for it. They don't even change the font for the Emerson stamp. You can also get a Mojotone that looks just like it.... unless I am missing something here?

BTW, I finally got a good look at Corsair's avatar. Here in Florida people will often put a screen around their pool to keep little kids and cool looking guitars from falling in.

[Rossc0]

As an alternative, you could get that plus all 3 pickups at once doing the 7 Way Wiring Mod. Pretty easy with the addition of a DPDT micro switch.

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[Fretworn]

My ST 12 string has Gibson Explorer III wiring. You need two three way switches instead of the standard 5 way switch, but you can get any pickup combo.

BTW Neck & Bridge is a great sound for a ST, all three pickups at once was kind of underwhelming.

[Simon Barden]

BTW Neck & Bridge is a great sound for a ST, all three pickups at once was kind of underwhelming.

The 'all three pickups on' sound is going to depend a bit on the pickups. On my DG Strat it sounds OK, though it's a bit thinner than the standard honky bridge+mid or mid+neck sounds. Not a tone you'd use a lot, but with the right pickup mix isn't totally unuseable (not that I could say what that mix is). If your mixed positions already sound pretty thin, then 'all pups on' could be too thin to use at all.

But I'd certainly agree than bridge plus neck is a very useable tone. To me, it sounds more like what I expect a Strat neck pickup to sound like, clean and bright, rather than the slightly harsh tone you normally get from one.

[corsair]

Well... with the new set of Toneriders and the blend pot in and running just fine, the guitar is just mega! It has been transformed from a dead thing to something lithe and muscular - that blend circuit is great; I wonder why they don't do that from the factoery, eh?!?

Thanks to Andy and Scott et al. for helping to transform both my 'telecaster' and the strat into useful instruments!

It's not a PBG... does anyone want a look at it?

[Bakersdozen]

Yep I love the blend on my Strat. And having master volume and tone works heaps better for me

[ILRGuitars]

I've put a blend pot in my HSS Strat copy, also a coil split push/push switch. I'm loving it. Some sounds are a bit thin but by adding the full coils a beefs up the sound to a usable level. I'm finding that some of the settings with the blend pot on 5 are really good too.

[Simon Barden]

Resurrecting this thread because I've just found out that blend pots come in two flavours. The one Weirdy described near the start of the thread has a 'MN' taper. This is the sort you want for your guitar pickups. The other sort has an 'AC' taper (log + anti-log). This type is more used as a pan control in mixers and the like (so one input and two outputs as opposed to two inputs and one output for standard guitar/bass use).
The AC type should in theory have a 3dB reduction on both pots at the 50% point, which would give a constant level output if both input signals were the same. But the reality is that it's more likely to be a 6dB or more drop, resulting in a drop in output level at this point. With guitar pickups, you also need to add in phase cancellation, thinning the sound and also reducing the volume a bit.

So make sure you have an MN taper pot (Bourns do one). If you think you may have an AC type, then you should be able to check it with a multimeter, as the resistance on an MN pot will only change over half it's travel (you may have to unsolder some wires to stop the other half of the pot interfering with the readings.

I'd also recommend using a 500k pot rather than a 250k pot. The pot track/resistance will be in parallel with the volume pot track resistance, so will reduce the effective volume pot resistance considerably. Regardless of whether you've got single coils or humbuckers, 500k is the minimum resistance blend pot you should be looking for if you have passive pickups. Blending active signals is different, and you'd probably use 25k or 50k pots at most.