any reason why i cant use copper wiring from an old extension chord to extend wiring or join pots, even earth wires?
noticed all the pups i have got silver wiring - just checking b4 i make an error
cheers
Guvna
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any reason why i cant use copper wiring from an old extension chord to extend wiring or join pots, even earth wires?
noticed all the pups i have got silver wiring - just checking b4 i make an error
cheers
Guvna
In theory, no. Mains cables just tend to be a lot thicker than the type of cabling necessary in guitars, so it's often a lot harder (or impossible) to push them through the holes in pot tags. It's also a lot bulkier, so in some guitars where space is tight (like may Teles), you might find it a struggle to fit everything in the control cavity.
The pickups won't have silver wiring, but the copper wiring will have had its end 'tinned' with solder, to stop the ends fraying and making them easier to poke through holes in the pot tags.
Thanks for your help Simon,Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Barden
another question if i may, are the volume pots and tone pots the same, ie 500k ? i have a few from Dedman marked 500k and a couple of others i cant quite read - even with my glasses lol.. cheers .. have u seen the redpine lap steel progress? i thinks its getting there, today i screwed down the bridge with tele pup and and going back to shed to attempt drilling the tuner holes.. getting a bit excited now
regards Guvna
Yes, I've seen the slightly less suggestive Red Pine lap steel build, ;)
Bright, clean-sounding single-coil pickups (like the Tele bridge one), normally use 250k pots, and darker sounding humbuckers normally use 500k pots. In combination with the inductance, resistance and capacitance of the pickup itself, the pots form a low-pass filter network, which both rolls-off the treble frequencies above a certain point and also creates a 'resonant peak' at that cut-off frequency and so emphasises the frequencies around the cut-off point. The higher the pot resistance, the higher that cut-off frequency is and the brighter the pickups sound, the lower the value, the more the highs are attenuated.
So unless you want a really bright sound, you'd be best sticking with 250k pots. Audio taper for the volume (these will normally say A250k on the pot), and audio or linear taper for the tone - linear pot would read B250k. I quite like audio taper for the tone as it's easier to just knock a little treble off, whilst linear can get quite dull quite quickly. It's more a matter of personal choice, whereas for the volume pot section an audio taper will give an even-sounding volume reduction, whilst linear will get quiet very quickly and make it very difficult to reduce the volume by a small amount.
It's also normal for the volume and tone pots to have the same resistance values, though you could try a 500k tone pot for a slightly brighter edge to the overall sound, which can work well on Strat pickups for example. The Fender TBX tone circuit is a dual gang pot with different pot resistance values. Below 5.5 on the dial, it works like a normal 250k tone pot, but above 5.5, it winds in a higher resistance from the second pot, which adds a bit more zing to the sound and can make a Strat sound even more "Stratty" (I've only tried Strats with this fitted, so can't comment on what it does on a Tele).
And there's nothing to stop you from putting in a 500k tone pot and having it turned down a bit normally (as it can easily give you just a 250k value) if you ever feel like you want a bit more edge to the sound (...this one goes up to 11).