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Post by sumitagarwal on Feb 28, 2024 18:23:08 GMT -5
Simple question but above my brain grade: if I have humbuckers that sound good uncovered, but I want to add gold-plated nickel silver covers for aesthetics and theoretical tiny bit of noise shielding, what value pots should I bump up to to get the same tone as the uncovered humbuckers with 500K pots?
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Post by newey on Feb 28, 2024 20:29:07 GMT -5
You won't even get that if you don't ground the cover.
As for pot values, I wouldn't think that adding a cover would make enough of a difference to warrant changing the pot.
Keep in mind that only certain resistance values are readily available, and in sizes suitable for guitars. From 500K, next step up would be 1M, I think some 750K ones may be available but if so, they're not common. In the other direction, 300K or 250K are basically the choices. Just off the top of my brain, I'd think the gaps between those standard values would be too large for the change with the cover added. I'd stick with the 500K.
Also consider that there are many dozens of similar HH guitars being made by a slew of manufacturers. Some use covered HBs, some uncovered. But regardless, they virtually all use 500K pots with their HBs. HH guitars have been made since the 1950's, and if there was a better value to use, we'd likely have seen one or more manufacturers using it. They've been at this for a while.
But, I've never done an "ear-to-ear" comparison, so grain of salt and all that . . .
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Post by sumitagarwal on Feb 28, 2024 21:21:56 GMT -5
You won't even get that if you don't ground the cover. As for pot values, I wouldn't think that adding a cover would make enough of a difference to warrant changing the pot. Keep in mind that only certain resistance values are readily available, and in sizes suitable for guitars. From 500K, next step up would be 1M, I think some 750K ones may be available but if so, they're not common. In the other direction, 300K or 250K are basically the choices. Just off the top of my brain, I'd think the gaps between those standard values would be too large for the change with the cover added. I'd stick with the 500K. Also consider that there are many dozens of similar HH guitars being made by a slew of manufacturers. Some use covered HBs, some uncovered. But regardless, they virtually all use 500K pots with their HBs. HH guitars have been made since the 1950's, and if there was a better value to use, we'd likely have seen one or more manufacturers using it. They've been at this for a while. But, I've never done an "ear-to-ear" comparison, so grain of salt and all that . . . I was actually pretty surprised that I could hear the difference in this video even playing on my phone while flossing: In particular I heard it with the gainier tones, maybe something like the additional high end pushes the amp just a little bit more into distortion? Anyways, the neck is where I'm usually looking for more clarity so maybe the solution is 1 meg pots for the neck. Oh, and I would definitely ground the cover. I don't necessarily think guitars need a bunch of shielding, but ungrounded metal immediately next to the coils seems bad. In fact I just solved an issue with my PRS TCI "S" pickups which were insanely noisy because they're designed with no ground wire and an ungrounded brass baseplate. Grounding the baseplate solved that. |
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Post by newey on Feb 28, 2024 22:08:07 GMT -5
I'm not doubting that you can hear a difference, I question whether it's enough to merit changing a pot. But, hey, pots are fairly cheap, you can certainly go up to a 1 Meg and see if you like it. If it's too bright, I think dialing a 1 Meg pot down to about 7 puts you about 500K anyway. I have a single-pickup Strat-ish guitar with a GFS Dual Lipstick tube humbucker at the bridge. The lipstick tubes are bright as single coils, and bright as a humbucker as well, and I was going for maximum brightness. I used a 1 M volume pot with a 500K tone pot, so 333K combined, as opposed to 250K with two 500K pots. I got all kinds of bright, some might say "icepick"  . I usually play it with the tone rolled off a bit to tamp it down, it is a bit over the top even by my weird standards. |
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Post by Yogi B on Feb 29, 2024 1:55:11 GMT -5
Funny how the screw polepieces magically become un-reliced when " the same" pickups are uncovered. |
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Post by sumitagarwal on Feb 29, 2024 7:23:31 GMT -5
Funny how the screw polepieces magically become un-reliced when " the same" pickups are uncovered. Hah! Very astute. I also was wondering if the pickup meandered closer to the strings, as typically happens when people lose the bulk of the cover and eyeball the distance during setup |
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. I usually play it with the tone rolled off a bit to tamp it down, it is a bit over the top even by my weird standards.
