Build#2 - DSCM

[grantxx]

I notice you’ve got 0.047uF caps. It’s all down to personal preference, but the ‘standard’ fitment for humbuckers these days is 0.022uF, with 0.047uF being the ‘standard’ for naturally brighter single coils.

I did a fair bit of research and came up with this combo of 500k pots and 0.047uf caps, was really a starting point and can tweak it if I dont like it, the components are pretty cheap really. To be honest it is an experiment. But it seemed if using Humbuckers many seemed to point to the 0.047 caps. ???

The bigger the cap value, the lower the tone controm’s low-pass filter’s ‘knee’ frequency is and the more the treble and mids get rolled-off. Historically, Gibson have fitted tone caps between 0.1uF and 0.022uF over the years in their guitars, but 0.022uF has been pretty much the norm since at least the 90s and the 58-60 ‘bursts had 0.022uF caps fitted as standard (though undoubtedly there will be exceptions due to component availability and at least three different types of cap were used). You’d have to have golden ears if you can hear the difference between the two values with the tone knob on 10 (especially with 500k tone pots) but turn the knob down and 0.047uF will get a lot darker than 0.022uF and get darker quicker. I’ve experimented with different tone pot values and tone cap values, and I’ve settled on a personal preference for 250k log pots and 0.015uF caps for all my guitars. I’ll never use the very wooly sound of bigger cap values with the tone control on 1 or 0, so I prefer to have far more control over smaller changes in the tone over a wider knob rotation range. But for some people that just wouldn’t be enough.

Thats interesting I had thought the opposite with a higher resistance pot the control would be finer and have more ability to fine tune the tone. If it is not what I am expecting I will adjut as required, happy to experiment.

If you have a multimeter, I’d measure the pot resistances (across the two outer tabs) and pick the two with the highest resistances to be the volume pots. The higher the value, the brighter/clearer the pickup tone will be. The best sounding 50s bursts (or so the experts say) tend to have pots with values in the 520-530k region. Standard pot resistance tolerance is normally +/- 10%, so can range from 450k to 550k. In reality most pots are closer to the nominal value, but even so, you’ll probably notice a difference between a 490k pot and a 510k one. That’s why some people (like Bare Knuckle) offer 550k pots, so that the resistance will fall on the high side of 500k. Some ‘bursts pot have measured at 600k, so 550k should cover all the vintage range of values. (My own experience of the BK 550k pots on the one guitar I fitted them to is that the shafts rattle a lot more than normal, very noticeable on a hollow body guitar, and I’ll be replacing them soon).

Really powerful pickups with lots of inductance will normally sound quite dull if played clean, and these can benefit from using 1Meg pots, which will help to keep what treble there is. There’s not much point going above 1Meg as the gains in treble lie on an exponential curve, and 1Meg is very close to the limit line.

As I work on a lot of guitars I have a collection of pots ready for use and I’ve taken to measuring them all and writing the values on the side with a Sharpie, so I can use the highest value ones for volume pots.

Great info, thank Simon, I shall report back on this set up and see how it goes.