Post by cooltone on Jun 19, 2018 6:22:57 GMT -5
Everywhere I look log potentiometers are recommended for volume. I believe the virtues of using a linear potentiometer for volume have been overlooked so I thought I'd set them out here.
In the end whether you use a linear or log pot for your volume is a matter of personal preference but I just wanted to make sure that linear volume pots get a shout somewhere.
This is going to be based on my experiences with tonerider alinco 2 humbuckers(vintage pafs, 4.9H/8k3 Bridge, 4.1H/7k5). I expect this is applicable two single coil pickups but I haven't done anything to substantiate this.
I've been playing around with different wiring configurations for a few years now using ltspice to model and I ended up with a switched capacitor design which worked better than the standard configuration I used before.
Then, my brother asked me to repair my nephew's Epiphone and I fell into the rabbit hole. It was really knocked about. To keep it simple I planned to clean up the guitar, level the frets and drop in some tonerider pickups onto the existing wiring loom. I was pleasantly surprised by the performance.
On a fender vibro champ x2(5W with valve back-end) and then a 15w valve pp amp. Amp volume and gain at maximum or close to, the guitar volume had good control of the amp:
- 6 to 10 controlled the quality of the distortion, the actual volume didn't change too much over this range. The tone pot had good control of the harshness of the high frequency fizz.
- 0 to 3 gave a very clean, chimey sound with tone pot on 10, without a bypass cap. (Some may find the amp noise is too much).
This was the first time I was really able to control and set the Neck and Bridge pickups to give the clean/lead sounds I want on the guitar, selectable with the pickup switch.Fantastic!
When I looked back at the wiring loom the volume used a linear pot and the tone used a log pot. - against the most common recommendations I have read.
I believe this performance is possible because valve amps have some compression at high volume/gain, so a linear volume pot gives a "log-like" performance.
My brother used to work at the Marshall factory in tech repair. He said in general Gain pots are linear and Volume pots are log. I looked at a few valve amp schematics but I couldn't verify this as they didn't specify whether they will log or linear.
I believe this situation will be challenging to model on ltspice as it involves the whole signal chain. And it will be difficult to interpret the "feel" of the pots from an ltspice graph.
I have now installed this on three guitars, all well received. I'm planning to install on all my other guitars too, I am that impressed.
As an analogue engineer I bought into the rationale that audio pots are used to match the logarithmic human ear. This may be true for hi-fi volume controls, but now I question the rationale for guitar volume pots.
In the end whether you use a linear or log pot for your volume is a matter of personal preference but I just wanted to make sure that linear volume pots get a shout somewhere.
This is going to be based on my experiences with tonerider alinco 2 humbuckers(vintage pafs, 4.9H/8k3 Bridge, 4.1H/7k5). I expect this is applicable two single coil pickups but I haven't done anything to substantiate this.
I've been playing around with different wiring configurations for a few years now using ltspice to model and I ended up with a switched capacitor design which worked better than the standard configuration I used before.
Then, my brother asked me to repair my nephew's Epiphone and I fell into the rabbit hole. It was really knocked about. To keep it simple I planned to clean up the guitar, level the frets and drop in some tonerider pickups onto the existing wiring loom. I was pleasantly surprised by the performance.
On a fender vibro champ x2(5W with valve back-end) and then a 15w valve pp amp. Amp volume and gain at maximum or close to, the guitar volume had good control of the amp:
- 6 to 10 controlled the quality of the distortion, the actual volume didn't change too much over this range. The tone pot had good control of the harshness of the high frequency fizz.
- 0 to 3 gave a very clean, chimey sound with tone pot on 10, without a bypass cap. (Some may find the amp noise is too much).
This was the first time I was really able to control and set the Neck and Bridge pickups to give the clean/lead sounds I want on the guitar, selectable with the pickup switch.Fantastic!
When I looked back at the wiring loom the volume used a linear pot and the tone used a log pot. - against the most common recommendations I have read.
I believe this performance is possible because valve amps have some compression at high volume/gain, so a linear volume pot gives a "log-like" performance.
My brother used to work at the Marshall factory in tech repair. He said in general Gain pots are linear and Volume pots are log. I looked at a few valve amp schematics but I couldn't verify this as they didn't specify whether they will log or linear.
I believe this situation will be challenging to model on ltspice as it involves the whole signal chain. And it will be difficult to interpret the "feel" of the pots from an ltspice graph.
I have now installed this on three guitars, all well received. I'm planning to install on all my other guitars too, I am that impressed.
As an analogue engineer I bought into the rationale that audio pots are used to match the logarithmic human ear. This may be true for hi-fi volume controls, but now I question the rationale for guitar volume pots.
It doesn't always work for me in every situation but I certainly try them in most of my builds and let me ears decide. I suspect a large part of the thing that makes it work for some people (and not others) is how they use their Volume and Tone controls. I like options and I like to use them 
