Pots A and B

Hi everyone, hope all is well.

Just a quick question...Does it matter what pots you use for volume and tone controls ? Whats the difference between A and B pots ? What is supposed to designated to A and what to B please ?

The general convention for pots is that A is an audio/log taper and B is linear.

For smooth control of volume, you should always use an A type audio/log taper pot. Using a linear pot here will give a very sudden volume reduction when going from 10 to 9.

Tone pots are more a personal preference. It is more common for the tone pot to be a B type linear pot, but A type pots work here as well. For a faster tone roll-off, use a B type pot, but if you never really roll the tone back much, but occasionally like to take the edge off the sound, then an A type pot gives you more control at the top end of the tone control - say 10 down to 5. Below that, the tone then gets dull very quickly.

I tend to use audio on both. Seems like a smoother rolloff to me, but I tend to back off a bit or all the way, which is consistent with Simon's explanation

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Thank you Simon and Fender3x...I have always stuck to the A's, however, i am currently working on an EX5 and it has 1 x Tone and 2 x Volume controls and it came with 2 x B Pots and 1 x A Pot. I will purchase another two A pots and have three A500K pots.

thats a good plan

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Originally Posted by Andy40

thats a good plan

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Agreed. Not a bad idea to replace the cheapo pots that come with the kit anyway. Beware that shaft diameters vary for both the holes in the guitar and the knobs. US-spec is larger for the hole and uses a "fine spline" knob. That would mostly be Burnes and CTS pots.

If you want to use the same holes and knobs your best bet are Alpha pots. Some folks here don't like them, but I have tested a bunch and they seem OK to me. No better or worse than other standard guitar pots.

I also think it's a good idea to get a couple of extras so that if you do get bad one you have a replacement handy.

I test mine before putting them in a guitar. It's OK if they test a little higher or lower than 500K but they should be pretty close to the same as each other. I run some sound through them and twiddle them a bit to listen for scratchiness. Scratchy ones go in the trash.

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Thank you Andy.

Fender3x...Thank you for the heads up. I have purchased 8 x Gotoh pots. A500k and A1000k pots. I dont mind the diameters whether they are 7 or 8mm as i can always file the holes if need be for the 8mm's.

I have never tested or taken apart those, but they look identical to split shaft Alphas and should do fine.

You may need break off the tab on the top.

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Most Strat type guitars tend to use three 250k A (Log) type pots, one of them is used as the volume control and the other two are tone controls, 250k A (Log) pots tend to suit most Strat Single-Coil pickups because the pot loads the pickup a bit and gets rid of any excessive trebly-ness in the tone produced, Single Coils do tend to be naturally very bright, contrast that with the darker tone you get with Humbuckers which tend to have 500k A (Log) pots wired up to them.