Help with Volume Taper

[killheart7]

Hello all. I have a question concerning the taper of my volume pots.

I have a Les Paul wired 50's Style and love the taper on the volume pot that results from that setup. It just seems very even all the way across the sweep. My strat, on the other hand, has the same typical enormous hump at the bottom third of the pot's sweep that every guitar I recall owning since I was fourteen came stocked with. I tried wiring said strat the same way and find that it's too bright for those pickups. I loved the strat's sound the way it was before, so is there any way that I can achieve the same volume taper that the 50's wiring provides without affecting my strat's overall sound?

The guitar is wired with a master volume, master tone, and a series/parallel switch for the bridge humbucker.

I've never used one, but I read somewhere that a treble bleed mod changes the taper of your pot, could that be what I'm looking for? I'm all ears.


-Justin

[reTrEaD]

Jan 2, 2017 3:54:00 GMT -5 killheart7 said:

I read somewhere that a treble bleed mod changes the taper of your pot, could that be what I'm looking for?

Hello Justin,

I suspect the change in taper from a treble bleed mod would be contrary to what you're looking for. The simplest treble bleed mod is just a capacitor from the "hot" of the volume control to the wiper. That doesn't change the taper but it overcompensates horribly. So the "second generation" treble bleed mod includes a resistor (150k ohms seems to be a good choice) in parallel with the capacitor. That mitigates the overcompensation. But it also affects the taper of the pot.

Unfortunately, that makes the change in volume slow near the maximum volume end of the rotation and faster at the minimum end. It sounds to me as if you're looking for the opposite.

If you connect the tone control to the "hot" of the volume control, replace your 250k volume pot with a 500k pot, and connect a 470k resistor between the wiper and ground of the volume pot, this might take you where you want to go. This will cause a faster change in volume toward the maximum volume end of the volume control and maintain the stock loading when the control is at maximum.

Worth a try, imho.

[killheart7]

Hello, and thanks for the great information. I THINK I'm already using a 500k for the volume, actually. I know it's a combination of 250 and 500, and I think that's the way it is currently, forgot to mention that when I was making my post. So maybe I'm halfway there already. I'll probably have time to tinker this weekend. I'll post updates when I can. Thanks.

-Justin