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Replacing vol/tone pots

wells

New member
Joined
Dec 16, 2001
Messages
4
Hi,
I use a foot volume pedal to control the guitar output to the amp. The majority of the time I pre-set both guitar vol pots to 10 and tone pot to 7 on the bridge & 10 on the neck pickup. I have seen a lot of posts about replacing vol/tone pots & caps & wiring changes to improve the guitar sound. Can I assume because the guitar pots are wide open that replacing them would be pointless or do the pots even though wide open still have an effect.

Thanks for any help
 

GlassSnuff

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 30, 2002
Messages
3,671
Yes, it will affect the tone if you change the values of your pots.

Your pots are wired in parallel, and together they provide a load on your pickup that determines its resonant peak. It's not quite the same as turning up the treble on your amp, as it affects just one narrow band of overtones.

Doubling the value of your pots tends to make things "icepicky", ie, too sharp, and halving the value will be dull and boring, just to give you a sense of the range involved.

As an example, if you set your tone pot to 7 every time, then a 250K tone pot could make that permanent - on "10". Of course, you won't be able to turn it up anymore, but some like the simplicity.
 

Bruce R

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 2, 2007
Messages
1,029
I was completely satisfied with the replacement harness I bought from Roy at RS Guitarworks for my R8 vos. It couldn't have been easier to do, and the difference was night and day. Check out his site.
 
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