Capacitor Question ???

[Simon Barden]

With the volume control, the full-range of the signal is being attenuated as you would expect.

If you look at the wiring, the connection to the tone pot is made from the connection on the volume pot that also connects to the pickup output. So if you use the tone pot, some of that signal is going down to earth via the tone capacitor. Because it's the resistance of the pickup that forms the actual R part of the RC tone circuit, and there's obviously something wrong with the pickup, the low-pass circuit cut-off frequency is affected and probably all (not just the high frequency part) of the signal is passing to ground through the tone circuit. Because the tone pot is normally selected as a linear pot, then unlike the log/audio taper volume pot, it doesn't take much turning to significantly lower the pot resistance.

[METAL Rulez 4ever]

With the volume control, the full-range of the signal is being attenuated as you would expect.

If you look at the wiring, the connection to the tone pot is made from the connection on the volume pot that also connects to the pickup output. So if you use the tone pot, some of that signal is going down to earth via the tone capacitor. Because it's the resistance of the pickup that forms the actual R part of the RC tone circuit, and there's obviously something wrong with the pickup, the low-pass circuit cut-off frequency is affected and probably all (not just the high frequency part) of the signal is passing to ground through the tone circuit. Because the tone pot is normally selected as a linear pot, then unlike the log/audio taper volume pot, it doesn't take much turning to significantly lower the pot resistance.

Thank you for your info Simon. I have a lot to learn about pots and caps. I am still trying to understand the difference between linear and taper in pots and values and volts in capacitors.