4:41 The higher the resistance, more of the highs come through. 5:04 The lower the resistance, closer to ground, the more top end we lose. 7:25 Biggest impact to tone is changing the volume pot. 9:12 250k vs 500k pot sound test So lower resistance give you warmer, fuller sounds, higher resistance give you brightness and tight attack.
I can tell you why. If you had zero resistance, a short, your entire signal would be shunted to ground….disappears. The more resistance the less you lose the first things to go are small signal then mid then low or high/mid/low frequencies.
What nobody mentions is that none of these pots were at 500k or 250k when the guitar was being played! The crucial resistance here is that when the pot is fully open ... which isn't 500k or 250k ohms. The 500k or 250k is the figure when the pot is fully closed. So what is the resistance when the guitar is playing with fully open pots? ... well, unless you test the pots you won't know. Yes, it still boils down to the fact that 500k pots will be brighter than 250k pots but different pots have different tolerance levels so unless you measure the much lower resistance when fully open you can't make any properly detailed comparisons.
It's important to remember that the volume pot is wired as a voltage gate, as a result the hot signal has to go through more resistance as the volume is turned down, attenuating more treble. This means that larger pots are brighter only at or close to full volume! 250K pots may be darker, but usually dont require anything like a treble bleed or 50's wiring to compensate for treble loss as volume is turned down.
Hi Dustin. Hope you can help me out. 1) How can the tone pot have influence on overall wiring resistance? For instance, I have an HSS guitar with 500k volume pot and two 560k resistor on each hot lug of each single coil so that they can see around 250k, but my concern is how the tone pot will get into this. 2) How different is it to solder the capacitor on the tone pot in the middle lug or the third lug. I have seen both wirings. Does it change considerably? Consider for that, a master volume and master tone.Thanks a lot!
It's a treb pass, not a bleed. I have no idea when the term, got reversed. A bleed shunts to ground, signal gone. A pass, sends desired signal to where you want it, not to a dead end.
@@johncollins5552Only if you like the effect. Some like the sweetness turned down and one knob control. With out a treb PASS as you come up in volume treb frequencies can talk to an amp aggressively. I don't mind using the tone pot. Been using treb passes for near 50 years.
I play mostly Strats, so it's (mostly when I have the time to change it) 250k volume with high pass and 500k tone's with .015MFD cap on neck and .022MFD cap at bridge with middle wide open. I just find that kind of setup gives me a consistent expectation from all my guitars at basically all volumes. You are right about the capacitance induced by the 500K pot as volume though, higher is not always brighter.
I have 500k pots for my Tele style guitar that has a high output single coil in the bridge and PAF in the neck. I love this set up and will never change it- it’s amazing for gritty blues riffs into a low wattage amp.
If you want more highs (upper harmonics), use 1 meg pots or switch them completely out of the circuit. Thats why I like pull switches on a pot. You can switch the pot completely out of circuit for the cleanest sound. With that arrangement, you also can switch from a good rhythm sound to a louder, cleaner sound for solos by pulling the pot/switch up..
I bought a Traveler Guitar because I wanted something compact. But what sold me was a RUclips video by a enthusiast playing one. It sounded great. It has a pickup and a output jack. No volume or tone control and as far as I know, no capacitor anywhere. 99.44% of guitar sound is the hands holding it. Unless You were Stevie Ray Vaughan, he needed to use the knobs and switches to keep his hands from melting the strings.
Thank you! I listened very closely a number of times and I prefer the 250's but I can see where other folks appreciate the 500's for their own style. Cheers!
Agree with the 250's. It seems more versatile on both low and high end tones. If you're picking more fills and solos the 500k pot gives you a more tele sound especially for country licks.
Love it! the volume pot isn't just a variable resistor, it's a voltage divider. Resistance in both series and parallel. I put a 250K in a crazy-bright PRS, brought it back into the Les Paul range. Look into adding a Resistor between the final signal and ground too. 800K or so.
Great video as always!!! I’ve dropped in 500k’s in my partscaster Tele build. For pickups I’ve got Strat Tex Mex in neck and bridge. Although the Strat pu was not meant for a Tele bridge I was able to adapt it. The 500k’s really made a huge difference. Thanks to this video I now understand how pots work in a guitar. Thank you for all the great info you give on all of your content.
I just bought one of those Squier Thinlines and really dig the sound from the stock setup but this was informative and you've got me thinking about future mods. Thanks!
The thing about Squier, and fender in general, they make for great modding platforms...if you're willing to put some money into it, you can wind up with something that's greater than the sum of its parts, and there's lots of bolt-on upgrades on the market for fender/squier
A Squire Thinline is my go to midnight guitar. loud enough to hear, quiet enough the wife sleeps through. I put in Texas Specials, brass saddles, and fresh tuners from Japan. (I think Gotoh) Love it.
You said everything was the same BUT you changed the strings when you put in the 500k pots. New strings will always brighten up your sound. Just saying. Good vid.
Dylan mentions re-wiring “wide range” HBs to improve tone; He mentioned a video. Is he talking about rewiring the humbuckers that come with a MIM that are Standard Hum bucker is that only cosmetically look like the wide range humbuckers? I replaced mine with a real CUNIFE humbucker from Fender, but I have the fake/standard humbucker with a bar magnet sitting in my parts box; If it’s worth making right, I’d get it done. Can someone send me the video? I can’t find the link anywhere on the “Dylan talks tone” channel.
That difference was so huge...I'm going to try 750k and 1 meg. The tone I loved the most was in 1977 when I removed all electronics from my guitar and wired direct from the pickups to the output jack. That sound was huge and had presence.
@@Blueguitar007 pickup technology..quality of the wire, density of the wiring,nature of the magnets,pickup shielding etc..should certainly have had some influence on the sound..
That was because with the 500K pots, he switched to the Bridge or Both pickups.... he Did Not do that with the 250K pots... watch it again and pay attention to his right hand. He switched the selector.. Twice, after he began playing... with the 500K pots... only Once, if at all (neck only) with the 250K pots.
I don't usually care about the "fine nuances of tone" yadda yadda, but this was a situation where I could instantly hear the difference with my eyes closed.
I don't always agree with you 100%. However, I agree with you 100% on this issue. This was a great video and I'm one of those people who never touches a Tone control on the guitar because I don't want to take a pristine sound, bugger it all up, and then send it to my amp and try to play with the amp controls to try to put back the good sound that I just screwed up by messing with a tone control on the guitar. I have several friends who are fairly famous guitarist and when I mentioned that I never use the guitar tone controls, most of them said that they never use the guitar tone controls. Wow, Big surprise! We all use the same logic. Send what you've got to the amp and then adjust the amp to get the sound you want. I even built a guitar with two 9 K Humbuckers that I wired to the switch as Bridge only, Neck only, both in Series, and Shunt to ground so the guitar wouldn't set up on stage and Howl while taking a break. Guess what? I only installed a 500 K Volume pot and no Tone pot. After several years of enjoying it and recording a couple of albums, I gave the guitar to a guitar buddy who plays about twice as good as me. Six months later, I asked him how he liked the guitar, and he said that it plays like butter, and he loves to use it on recording sessions.
I have an old Washburn Force 3 as a project guitar. It has a couple of Bill Lawrence 500s, an xl and an r, in bridge and middle, as well as a Symore Duncan Hotrails mini in the neck. All pickups have toggles for splitting. While adding resistors to the switches to fix the thin split tone, i swapped the 250k pots, volume and both tone, to 500k. The difference is pretty startling with these fairly hot pickups. I've always had to ride this thing right at 9 or 10 for volume and tone. Now i can get decent output and tonal control around 4 or 5 volume. The tone controls are more subtle but give more control and sound a bit more musical, imo. The guitar sounds better than it ever has and i have this video to thank for giving me inspiration. It's also great that i got to use some of my late father's old components in this build. He would have loved your channel!
Assuming that the strings we're brand new for the 250k demo (you didn't say) as you changed the strings for the 500k demo. I thought the 500k pots demo sounded "a bit" fuller/warmer than the 250k pots.
Learned a great tidbit of info on pots! Thanks for the small epiphany! I recently ordered a Tele kit that came with cheap, 500k, Chinese dime sized pots. It had standard (5.0-6.5 k) single coils that I swapped out for a hb in the neck and the kit bridge pup. I replaced them with a double pot - 250/500k CTS for tone and volume. Your video helped me to see I probably could have saved a few coins and just used 2 500k pots instead. Thanks for the great information!!
I already have a 1982 AVRI & a 2015 Nashville Teles. I came across a 2021 Infinity which I promptly gutted electronically. I installed a MIM Tele bridge pickup and a Wilkinson M series humbucker, 500k pots, .022uf cap & a 270k resistor for the bridge pickup per a Fender wiring diagram. Way too shrill. I switched to .047 cap & a 510 resistor. The HB was extremely loud and the single coil mostly silent. Very low volume. I switched the resistor to a 270k & 100k wired in series, 370k total. Sounds great now.
I like the 500, it was more robust, and it gave the output a little midrange sizzle. But I like the janglyness of the 250. The trouble is what pots allow the pickups to behave as they should, but that is subjective.
I typically, but not always put 1M pots in humbucker guitars and 500s in single coil guitars cos as Dylan said here, you can take away but not add in passive guitars I use my tone knob at around 6 as my 'default' sound and from there I can remove more treble as per usual with a tone knob, but also add some treble back by rolling the knob towards 10, just gives a little bit wider a range of tone to play around with I also put 0.033uf caps in for humbuckers and 0.068uf for single coils with a 5k resistor in each case on the feed to the tone knob sometimes
Dude, this answered a problem I was having with a JBjr. In the bridge of my strat. I knew I was missing out because of the 250k pots but I didn't know exactly how that worked and also that changing just the volume pot might be and option. You rock with all the much-needed guitar tech information that we all need. Thanks!
If it's HSS they make stacked pots (basically a 250k on top of a 500k sharing the same knob post) You can wire the humbucker up to the 500k side and the single coils to the 250k side if that's your jam!
I had some 500k pots in a tele with single coils when I installed an Obsidian wire solderless harness that came with them. I had to dial the tone almost all the way down on the bridge pickup so it wasn't too shrill. I wound up buying a Mojotone solderless harness with 250k pots and installing that in the guitar and it was much more to my liking.
Hey! You should create two separate circuits. Switch on the 250k when you want that sound and visa versa with 500k. Add in phase, out phase hum-buckers, split coil, coil taps and a builtin graphic eq! 😄oh dont forget to include a Kaossilator!
I liked the 500K pot sound MUCH better! Now I'm considering swapping in a 1 Megohm pot on an all-mahogany guitar I have which might stand to be brighter sounding. I was thinking of putting in one or more P-94 type pickups; a new pot would be MUCH cheaper and would preserve hum rejection. Worth trying before the pickup replacement!
@@jumpingman8160 It's funny how keyboard warriors like you repeat something because they have watched one or two wannabe scientific attention hungry videos that "proof" something wrong. And no, wood is not the most important factor that creates the sound of a guitar but it is far from it doesn't matter starting with how the wood resonates with your hands while you play the instrument giving you a completely different feedback as well as influencing attack and sustain.
It would’ve been nice to hear the 250k pot played through all 3 pickup positions like what u did with the 500k. Also would’ve like to hear them played with gain. Aside from that, very informative, thank you.
You all, noticed that little "leave out" with the bridge pickup on the 250K pot demo, as well - huh? My "gut" tells me that he did that on purpose and that no-one would notice... but, not saying he did for sure. Personally, Had he switched on the Bridge Pickup, I think the 250s would have sounded "fuller"... at least to my ears. I found that the 500K's sounded much too "tinny" on the high end. To be honest... I don't play 6 string guitar... only Bass, Lap Steel, Mandolin & learning Harmonica.
I am restoring a 1989 Korean E9xxxxx Stratocaster. The small pots are good quality, 500K's with a .33 cap. The volume is linear, so you can essentially control treble bright to dark tones with just turning the volume down slightly.
I have a Caparison 8 string that only has a single volume knob. It came with a 500k pot, which sounded fine through a high gain setting, but the extra brightness of only having a single 500k pot made the cleans STERILE sounding, so I swapped it for a 250K pot and now the guitar sounds great clean and when I'm playing high gain I already run an overdrive that boosts the treble anyway.
For some of my guitars I wire each pickup direct to the output and have separate output jacks for each pickup. That way you can have separate amps for each pickup, which can sound massive when you blend/pan them. It helps to have a master compressor/limiter as a safety net to level any significant EQ or volume jumps when switching.
In all my WRHB guitars. I put in 1Meg vol and 500K tone pots. that's my go to. I've tried most WRHB's and really like the Lollars and Novak makes a nice one too.
For what it's worth: I use 500k pots with my Fender Noiseless 3 pickups. I also put them in my Tele. It has Dimarzio stacked single coils. It, as you mentioned opens them up which I like.
I just saw the announcement that EMG is making an exclusively Jazzmaster set of active pickups and have seen a couple reviews on them and so far sound pretty dope. Can't wait for the official release and give them a shot myself
If you like the way it sounds I would leave it as is. Now if you don't like the sweep or the tension of the pots, that's different. Maybe you have a volume pot that's very stiff and awkward to use when doing swells, you would probably be happier with a low friction pot of the same value. Or if you have a low friction pot that your hand bumps into, try a medium friction pot etc.
250k is darker, more “natural”, and sounds better to me. The 500k sounded smoother and had more treble but lacked the grit of 250k. Maybe I’m weird. I think it’s the natural part that I like about 250k but could just be what I’m used to hearing. But definitely 500k is clearer, sparklier, and that’s not a bad thing! Good video!
Had the same reaction almost instantly. Asa he started playing after the swap. The sound preference for me is 250k. That's a relief. Saves me a trip to the tech. Can get a better set of wireless now. lol
Nothing wrong with that, it's all personal preference, which I remembered the hard way. I'm the opposite and like the bright sound. Made a huge mistake when I got back into playing years ago. After watching a bunch of the Les Paul RUclipsrs that lived and died by the rich and warm sound that it's supposed to be, I spent way too much time and money finding and wiring pickups until I mimicked *their preferred sound. My dumbass spent a month trying to convince myself that I loved it.. before inevitably putting my setup back in and swearing never another "upgrade" to someone else's preference. Like beer, restaurants, guns and everything else people fight about, If it's good to you, it's the right one.
Did this one very well. Yep when it comes to passive electronics you can only subtract frequency in the circuit, your only way to add frequency is through your physical input - but you can only play so hard haha
I am building a telecaster with a neck humbucker and bridge single coil. I am clearing out my parts drawer to build it, and I ended up with a pair of old Alpha pots--375k volume and 500k tone. Will do a demo when it is built.
3:45 all potentiometers are variable resistors. Wiring a pot as a volume just makes all of the signal go to ground instead of through a capacitor then to ground in the case of a tone pot. They work in the exact same way. The only difference is the tone pot bleeds highs to ground. Volume pots bleeds the entire signal to ground. In both cases, the pots are variable resistors.
4:30 you’re really over complicating this. Pots are resistors. The higher the resistor value, the stronger the resistor. That’s it. A 250K pot is a weak resistor. Therefore, it will allow more high end signal to bleed to ground. So if you have bright pickups, using low value resistors will darken them up. If you have dark pickups, using high value resistors will brighten them up. Why? Because high value resistors are strong resistors, so they will do a better job of resisting the high from being bled to ground. That’s it. Don’t over complicate. You’ll just confuse people.
I put 500k ots in a telecaster to see how it would be and I kept them there ! Brought out more treble in the neck pickup that sounded fab and the bridge can be a bit harsh so I just turn the pot down halfway or so.
Another thing to consider is rarely is a pot valued at what it's sold. Many "250k" are around 220k. "500k" can measure anywhere from 420k-520k and that's even buying so-called measured tolerance higher priced Bourns or CTS. Basically, that mass source production pot on your volume could be the wet blanket covering your tone.
folks, remember that in Alternating Currents ("AC", like audio signals) we not only talk about mere resistance, we talk about impedance (Z). What happens when using different pots values is that we modify the output impedance of the guitar (pickup Z in parallel with pot vol resistance). And the impedance, along with the parasitic capacitances in the coil itself, in the cable, , etc, varies with frequency. The coupling between the input impedance of the amp/pedal and the output impedance of the guitar also influences (that's why pedals that don't have "true bypass" lose a little in highs, it's all about impedances (like the "inverted" wah and Gilmour's seagulls) Tipical Z of strat pickups (alone) are near 800-900 kohms (in the resonant frecuency, typical 10-11kHz), When we put a vol potentiometer, that resistance dominates the total impedance, so the output impedance of the guitar will now be a value close to the real value of the volume potentiometer (the total value 2 or more impedances/resistances in parallel will always be a little less than the smallest of them)
You make perfect sense sir. That's why I replaced all three of my 250k's in my Jazz with 1meg Linears. I want the full potential of the single coils and If the tone turns out to be too harsh or aggressive, then of course I'll have the option to dial it back.
a pot then is kind of like a mirror that reflects the sound of the pickups toward the output, and you can either fade it out til its invisible and there's no signal, or fade it in and reflect everything into the output. but more resistance means a more reflective mirror.
I totally agree with you. In fact, I have a 2000 American Fender Strat Deluxe w/SSS and I'm gonna put a pair of humbuckers in it with the 500K pots. Thanks for the incredibly Clear explanation. 👍
I just saw this video - excellent content, brother. I've been told by reputable guitar techs that there is no difference between the signal path of a 250k setup versus a 500k (or 1 meg) setup when the pots are wide-open. Is this correct? Does the difference surface only when the pots are somewhere between the extremes of the sweep?
For a tele I would always change the 3-way switch to a 4 way and add a phase switch when changing the wiring I also use pot with an off position so I can eliminate the pot altogether,
I once upon a time I tinkered with pot and capacitor values in my main squeeze strat and would always come back to original values. The quality of the pots and caps improved, purely by accident. Clarostat pots and these big orange caps at normal strat specs. Forty tears later it still makes me happy. Experiment, explore, enjoy, find Home.
I put 1meg pots in my 72 thinline deluxe with Dimarzio bluesbuckers. Best decision I ever made with that guitar. It’s got tons of presence, sounds super clean, and when it’s too bright just roll the tone pot back to like 5-7.
I have pretty much the same view as you. I much rather have the guitar be too bright out of the gate and I can tame that with eq or the tone pot. If the guitar is dark or muddy out of the gate then in my opinion and experience it’s almost improbable to create what I call that good treble. I also agree the mid range and the cut just gets bigger with the 500k. I’ve been using 500k in all of my guitars including typical telecasters for a long time. Nice video. Well done.
I watched a TV Jones video on his TV Savalas Telecaster. If I remember correctly he puts a treble bleed cap on 500K volume pots. I like 500k Volume and 250k tone pots.
i did dig this. i agree with the idea that "once you take it away, you can't really put it back". my only request would be to let us know where the tone pots were set and what the caps were. and what happens when you dial it back... but, thanks ! well worth a listen.
I did a similar experiment on my Jazzmaster (with WRHBs) I moded the lead circuit with 500 k and the rhythm with both 1 Meg pots. i couldn't decide which one I like better so I left it like that. I use the 1 megs for leads
I can't hear a difference so I downloaded the audio and put it in Audacity. Direct comparison with hi-fi headphones and still no clear difference. I'm probably going old and deaf so I took a plot of the frequency spectrum on two similar strums and… still barely any notable difference. Both cut after 3kHz and the part between 1 and 3k is similar, the slope after 3k is the same. Whatever could be heard in the room has not come through RUclips.
I'm here because: I grew up a Les Paul guy and at 38 I got 3 Teles and love how bright they are. Now my Les Paul seems very dark. I'm hoping 1 meg pots and .022 bleed circuits will help.
i'm always a sucker for brighter tones... i just snagged an old squier strat for modding/mangling, and that came with 500k pots for the single coils, which surprised me. Also on your tele there, that maple fretboard/ block inlay is the coolest, i wish more fenders & squiers had that...
Good call. That's actually alot better than just a good call. Looks 1,000% cooler than regg'ler ol' black dots. Id think it work for/against whatever aesthetic you'd be going for depending on what colors you're working with. I kinda can't decide if I'd prefer those old pearl style, or black (to bank off this Tele's white body. Pearl can appear dingey(is that the word?-kindof dirty-faded, rhymes with Benji) so pearl might not be a good idea. Black is usually a safe bet. Pearl however, (now that I think about it)might just make the whole guitar look unkempt and tacky. lol Wouldn't wanna be dicking around on stage with a malnourished looking guitar. Suit yourself.
Finally. I've been wanting someone to do this AB for a.while, only with bass guitars. But this was full of information that remains helpful. Thoughts about this same discussion involving bass guitar?!.🙏
I have the same Thinline Tele and the first thing I did was swap out the pots and cap with 500 pot/.022 cap. Some folks even like to put 1m pots in, but I've never tried that because I honestly don't see the benefit in opening up things that much.
I do go straight out now heh. Straight to a processor with no volume/tone etc. and do any EQ work I need there. I like it. Get all the information available IMO and process it after.
That squire is really sweet the tone is sweet and natural that having been said . Dylan./don't quit winding pickups!!! lol great vid dude thank you !!!
I completely agree with your philosophy on pots, I use 500k in everything I modify, if not a 1meg. It's so easy to take out or compress down some of that high end with the tone circuit, a pedal, or with simple EQ on your amp or effects unit. I would rather be turning down my treble than constantly trying to boost something that is weak, which is almost always a lost cause. Using a 250k pot is like hacking off the high end of your tone with a hatchet, using the tone circuit or something else is like using a scalpel.
i knew this on paper . . adding something to circuit puts more resisatance etc. But when you explained how this is regards to tone, help me understaning more about electric guitars. 250 sounds more fendery single coily sound / but but 500 brings out more of the humbucker sound, and it has more layers . . . I guess one can play with tone n vol controls to get that sound the 250 makes.
Thanks for explaining the difference,,, you make perfect sense!And the 500k pots sound so much fuller,,, I’m with you,,, I say put 500k pots in every thing!
This guitar tech stuff is all nice and dandy, but that funk track at 2:20 is killer, especially when the drums and brass come in! Is it an original or a backing track? Or is it a regular song that I can find somewhere?
I did put on 500k volume on a G&L Legacy. People warned me it would sound too bright - I don't think so. But I also installed a switch to change the cap to .22 or .33, so I can roll off just a bit of the high end if I need to. I hardly ever turn the tone down, and if so, not by a lot. I do use DiMarzio Area 58 and 61 and a Crunch lab Humbucker. SCs are noiseless, allegedly those swallow some brightness and work better with 500k potis - just putting out, what I read. 250k on my Tele makes the Humbucker sound kind of like a Gibson neck HB with tone turned all the way down. Definitely something missing.
Wow, the Funkadelic Music! I am in the market for push pull pots for my Les Paul. I needed this video. 500k pots for me, looks like, it has 3 pickups. And yeah, those 500k pots sound beautiful.
Dylan thank you man for time and experience. Have you tried 1 meg potetiometer? I loved the 500k. Yes it moved the cue of the sonic spectrum. The pickups had more "presence" cover more frequencies? Thank you again Dylan.
I had my headphones cranked up and couldn't hear much difference, that is until you started flipping the pickup switch (with the 500Ks). I couldn't tell what you had selected with the 250Ks. Was it neck pickup all the way? Certainly, switching pickups make more of a change than playing with the pots.
My MIM 69 thinline had 1M pots. The bright spank was so off the wall that I never enjoyed playing it. I put 250k pots in to tame it a bit and it became my fav guitar.
Thanks for this, especially the nugget about the volume pot contributing more to the high-end roll off than the tone. For a SSH strat, I decided on two volumes - 250k/singles and 500k hum. 500k on the singles was just too brittle. I used a 250k for the tone, and I’m happy with the result. The 500k retains more brightness for the HB, and the bright Eric Johnson Neck/Mid singles chime nicely and aren’t brittle.
That's an interesting combo. I know very little about pots, so on my HSS Strat, as my post above mentions, I'm putting in a better humbucker. Does each pickup gets its own pot? If so, for an HSS would you recommend a 500k + 250k + 250k config, or replace each with 500k?
@@OhGawdHesGotAGun I think in theory, and as Dylan mentions, you can use 500k for everything. My particular single coils are already quite bright, and when I had a 500k master volume those singles became undesirably bright. I don’t mind two volumes, as there are interesting options to preset volumes like a LP. Now when I play through my Marshall Jubilee, I get nicely tamed singles and a fairly bright humbucker. The 250k pot for master tone is working very well. Your mileage may vary, and different pickups can make all the difference (inherently bright or dark pickups)
@@jimmclaren1 Thank you! "Tamed singles" sounds about right for a Strat (and for a porn movie title, lol). I appreciate your advice. I'll go for 500k for the humbucker only (if it doesn't already have a 500). Not sure how coil splitting comes into the equation, I know there are some that are modular (iterate between 500k & 200k or whatever). Thanks!
I've got a 2018 American Performer HSS Strat & I'm not a big fan of the 'Double Tap' humbucker (it sounds like a scalded cat giving birth) so I'm getting a local tech to put a Shawbucker 2 humbucker in its place. I miss the tone I got from my Tele Deluxe so I thought I'd replace my humbucker with one of its double Shawbuckers. I might lose my coil splitting ability but I don't care that much. I don't know what pots are in there now for volume, but I'm impressed with the 500k sound here. I've only been playing about 4yrs so I'd appreciate any "If you were me" advice on this. Would you, IYWM, get him to replace the existing pots with 500's? It's got 2 Yosemite single-coils & the Double-Tap humbucker. Also putting on a 10-way switch while it's being operated on. I'd do this all myself but I've never soldered before. I'll risk destruction on my Harley Benton, but not my Strat.
4:41 The higher the resistance, more of the highs come through.
5:04 The lower the resistance, closer to ground, the more top end we lose.
7:25 Biggest impact to tone is changing the volume pot.
9:12 250k vs 500k pot sound test
So lower resistance give you warmer, fuller sounds, higher resistance give you brightness and tight attack.
But it's relative to the pickup. Do you really want a brighter sounding strat pickup?
Hell yes!@@Blueguitar007
I got a seymour duncan jb sh4 and i like shredding and metal which should i buy 250k or 500k?
I can tell you why. If you had zero resistance, a short, your entire signal would be shunted to ground….disappears. The more resistance the less you lose the first things to go are small signal then mid then low or high/mid/low frequencies.
Hell! Thats all I was after! Thanx
What nobody mentions is that none of these pots were at 500k or 250k when the guitar was being played! The crucial resistance here is that when the pot is fully open ... which isn't 500k or 250k ohms. The 500k or 250k is the figure when the pot is fully closed. So what is the resistance when the guitar is playing with fully open pots? ... well, unless you test the pots you won't know. Yes, it still boils down to the fact that 500k pots will be brighter than 250k pots but different pots have different tolerance levels so unless you measure the much lower resistance when fully open you can't make any properly detailed comparisons.
It's important to remember that the volume pot is wired as a voltage gate, as a result the hot signal has to go through more resistance as the volume is turned down, attenuating more treble. This means that larger pots are brighter only at or close to full volume! 250K pots may be darker, but usually dont require anything like a treble bleed or 50's wiring to compensate for treble loss as volume is turned down.
Hi Dustin. Hope you can help me out. 1) How can the tone pot have influence on overall wiring resistance? For instance, I have an HSS guitar with 500k volume pot and two 560k resistor on each hot lug of each single coil so that they can see around 250k, but my concern is how the tone pot will get into this. 2) How different is it to solder the capacitor on the tone pot in the middle lug or the third lug. I have seen both wirings. Does it change considerably? Consider for that, a master volume and master tone.Thanks a lot!
I change all my guitars to 50,s wiring, does this mean I still would benefit from Tone bleed components added or not?
It's a treb pass, not a bleed.
I have no idea when the term, got reversed.
A bleed shunts to ground, signal gone.
A pass, sends desired signal to where you want it, not to a dead end.
@@johncollins5552Only if you like the effect. Some like the sweetness turned down and one knob control.
With out a treb PASS as you come up in volume treb frequencies can talk to an amp aggressively.
I don't mind using the tone pot.
Been using treb passes for near 50 years.
I play mostly Strats, so it's (mostly when I have the time to change it) 250k volume with high pass and 500k tone's with .015MFD cap on neck and .022MFD cap at bridge with middle wide open. I just find that kind of setup gives me a consistent expectation from all my guitars at basically all volumes. You are right about the capacitance induced by the 500K pot as volume though, higher is not always brighter.
I have 500k pots for my Tele style guitar that has a high output single coil in the bridge and PAF in the neck. I love this set up and will never change it- it’s amazing for gritty blues riffs into a low wattage amp.
This is exactly the explanation I was looking for! Just found you yesterday, killer channel!
If you want more highs (upper harmonics), use 1 meg pots or switch them completely out of the circuit. Thats why I like pull switches on a pot. You can switch the pot completely out of circuit for the cleanest sound. With that arrangement, you also can switch from a good rhythm sound to a louder, cleaner sound for solos by pulling the pot/switch up..
I bought a Traveler Guitar because I wanted something compact. But what sold me was a RUclips video by a enthusiast playing one. It sounded great. It has a pickup and a output jack. No volume or tone control and as far as I know, no capacitor anywhere. 99.44% of guitar sound is the hands holding it. Unless You were Stevie Ray Vaughan, he needed to use the knobs and switches to keep his hands from melting the strings.
Thank you!
I listened very closely a number of times and I prefer the 250's but I can see where other folks appreciate the 500's for their own style.
Cheers!
Same here!
Yup sometimes too much highs can be shrill with distortion pedals.
Agree with the 250's. It seems more versatile on both low and high end tones. If you're picking more fills and solos the 500k pot gives you a more tele sound especially for country licks.
Yep, JB straight to a 250k volume pot with no cap or tone knob. 330 sounds interesting
Love it! the volume pot isn't just a variable resistor, it's a voltage divider. Resistance in both series and parallel. I put a 250K in a crazy-bright PRS, brought it back into the Les Paul range. Look into adding a Resistor between the final signal and ground too. 800K or so.
Great video as always!!! I’ve dropped in 500k’s in my partscaster Tele build. For pickups I’ve got Strat Tex Mex in neck and bridge. Although the Strat pu was not meant for a Tele bridge I was able to adapt it. The 500k’s really made a huge difference. Thanks to this video I now understand how pots work in a guitar. Thank you for all the great info you give on all of your content.
I just bought one of those Squier Thinlines and really dig the sound from the stock setup but this was informative and you've got me thinking about future mods. Thanks!
The thing about Squier, and fender in general, they make for great modding platforms...if you're willing to put some money into it, you can wind up with something that's greater than the sum of its parts, and there's lots of bolt-on upgrades on the market for fender/squier
A Squire Thinline is my go to midnight guitar.
loud enough to hear, quiet enough the wife sleeps through.
I put in Texas Specials, brass saddles, and fresh tuners from Japan. (I think Gotoh)
Love it.
You said everything was the same BUT you changed the strings when you put in the 500k pots. New strings will always brighten up your sound. Just saying. Good vid.
He'd just rewound the Tele's fake WRHB into real WRHB in that 250K video I think, so they were also new strings.
Negligibly if the strings are not that old.
Dylan mentions re-wiring “wide range” HBs to improve tone; He mentioned a video. Is he talking about rewiring the humbuckers that come with a MIM that are Standard Hum bucker is that only cosmetically look like the wide range humbuckers? I replaced mine with a real CUNIFE humbucker from Fender, but I have the fake/standard humbucker with a bar magnet sitting in my parts box; If it’s worth making right, I’d get it done. Can someone send me the video? I can’t find the link anywhere on the “Dylan talks tone” channel.
@@sadlsore there was probably nothing wrong with your original hb,it’s in Dylan’s best interest to convince you to do all these “upgrades”
I'm sure he shed some skin cells playing one guitar the topography of his fingers changed miniscully lol your argument is invalid
That difference was so huge...I'm going to try 750k and 1 meg. The tone I loved the most was in 1977 when I removed all electronics from my guitar and wired direct from the pickups to the output jack. That sound was huge and had presence.
The Ramones did that to all the guitars.
@@Blueguitar007 pickup technology..quality of the wire, density of the wiring,nature of the magnets,pickup shielding etc..should certainly have had some influence on the sound..
That was because with the 500K pots, he switched to the Bridge or Both pickups.... he Did Not do that with the 250K pots... watch it again and pay attention to his right hand. He switched the selector.. Twice, after he began playing... with the 500K pots... only Once, if at all (neck only) with the 250K pots.
I don't usually care about the "fine nuances of tone" yadda yadda, but this was a situation where I could instantly hear the difference with my eyes closed.
I don't always agree with you 100%. However, I agree with you 100% on this issue. This was a great video and I'm one of those people who never touches a Tone control on the guitar because I don't want to take a pristine sound, bugger it all up, and then send it to my amp and try to play with the amp controls to try to put back the good sound that I just screwed up by messing with a tone control on the guitar. I have several friends who are fairly famous guitarist and when I mentioned that I never use the guitar tone controls, most of them said that they never use the guitar tone controls. Wow, Big surprise! We all use the same logic. Send what you've got to the amp and then adjust the amp to get the sound you want. I even built a guitar with two 9 K Humbuckers that I wired to the switch as Bridge only, Neck only, both in Series, and Shunt to ground so the guitar wouldn't set up on stage and Howl while taking a break. Guess what? I only installed a 500 K Volume pot and no Tone pot. After several years of enjoying it and recording a couple of albums, I gave the guitar to a guitar buddy who plays about twice as good as me. Six months later, I asked him how he liked the guitar, and he said that it plays like butter, and he loves to use it on recording sessions.
I have an old Washburn Force 3 as a project guitar. It has a couple of Bill Lawrence 500s, an xl and an r, in bridge and middle, as well as a Symore Duncan Hotrails mini in the neck. All pickups have toggles for splitting. While adding resistors to the switches to fix the thin split tone, i swapped the 250k pots, volume and both tone, to 500k.
The difference is pretty startling with these fairly hot pickups. I've always had to ride this thing right at 9 or 10 for volume and tone. Now i can get decent output and tonal control around 4 or 5 volume. The tone controls are more subtle but give more control and sound a bit more musical, imo. The guitar sounds better than it ever has and i have this video to thank for giving me inspiration.
It's also great that i got to use some of my late father's old components in this build. He would have loved your channel!
Assuming that the strings we're brand new for the 250k demo (you didn't say) as you changed the strings for the 500k demo. I thought the 500k pots demo sounded "a bit" fuller/warmer than the 250k pots.
I concur,
Dylan even I could hear a difference - thanks for the effort you put into your videos - Cheers from Canada
Tele with a Firebird neck pickup, after a bit of experimenting I found a 300k volume pot seemed to work best
I really dig the 500 k pots. It sounded much fuller
Learned a great tidbit of info on pots! Thanks for the small epiphany! I recently ordered a Tele kit that came with cheap, 500k, Chinese dime sized pots. It had standard (5.0-6.5 k) single coils that I swapped out for a hb in the neck and the kit bridge pup. I replaced them with a double pot - 250/500k CTS for tone and volume. Your video helped me to see I probably could have saved a few coins and just used 2 500k pots instead. Thanks for the great information!!
I already have a 1982 AVRI & a 2015 Nashville Teles. I came across a 2021 Infinity which I promptly gutted electronically. I installed a MIM Tele bridge pickup and a Wilkinson M series humbucker, 500k pots, .022uf cap & a 270k resistor for the bridge pickup per a Fender wiring diagram. Way too shrill. I switched to .047 cap & a 510 resistor. The HB was extremely loud and the single coil mostly silent. Very low volume. I switched the resistor to a 270k & 100k wired in series, 370k total. Sounds great now.
510 rather than 510K? No wonder it was almost slient.
I like the 500, it was more robust, and it gave the output a little midrange sizzle. But I like the janglyness of the 250. The trouble is what pots allow the pickups to behave as they should, but that is subjective.
I'm about to build my first guitar. I appreciate your incite.
Have fun. Building saves my sanity.
I typically, but not always put 1M pots in humbucker guitars and 500s in single coil guitars cos as Dylan said here, you can take away but not add in passive guitars
I use my tone knob at around 6 as my 'default' sound and from there I can remove more treble as per usual with a tone knob, but also add some treble back by rolling the knob towards 10, just gives a little bit wider a range of tone to play around with
I also put 0.033uf caps in for humbuckers and 0.068uf for single coils with a 5k resistor in each case on the feed to the tone knob sometimes
Dude, this answered a problem I was having with a JBjr. In the bridge of my strat. I knew I was missing out because of the 250k pots but I didn't know exactly how that worked and also that changing just the volume pot might be and option. You rock with all the much-needed guitar tech information that we all need. Thanks!
If it's HSS they make stacked pots (basically a 250k on top of a 500k sharing the same knob post) You can wire the humbucker up to the 500k side and the single coils to the 250k side if that's your jam!
@@lowalkoroc , nice! Thanks!
I had some 500k pots in a tele with single coils when I installed an Obsidian wire solderless harness that came with them. I had to dial the tone almost all the way down on the bridge pickup so it wasn't too shrill. I wound up buying a Mojotone solderless harness with 250k pots and installing that in the guitar and it was much more to my liking.
Hey! You should create two separate circuits. Switch on the 250k when you want that sound and visa versa with 500k. Add in phase, out phase hum-buckers, split coil, coil taps and a builtin graphic eq! 😄oh dont forget to include a Kaossilator!
I swapped the 500k pots in my prs se Michael Akerfeldt with 250k pots and was thrilled with the change. It was warmer and fatter.
I liked the 500K pot sound MUCH better! Now I'm considering swapping in a 1 Megohm pot on an all-mahogany guitar I have which might stand to be brighter sounding. I was thinking of putting in one or more P-94 type pickups; a new pot would be MUCH cheaper and would preserve hum rejection. Worth trying before the pickup replacement!
tonewood? lol
@@jumpingman8160 It's funny how keyboard warriors like you repeat something because they have watched one or two wannabe scientific attention hungry videos that "proof" something wrong. And no, wood is not the most important factor that creates the sound of a guitar but it is far from it doesn't matter starting with how the wood resonates with your hands while you play the instrument giving you a completely different feedback as well as influencing attack and sustain.
@@SxSxG666 calm down warrior. 😆
After a careful shielding job, my cheap P90's are nearly as quiet as my humbuckers, so long as I back away from my amp a little bit
It would’ve been nice to hear the 250k pot played through all 3 pickup positions like what u did with the 500k. Also would’ve like to hear them played with gain. Aside from that, very informative, thank you.
Was thinking the same thing bro !
Absolutely. I feel as thought the 250k would have performed as well if not better than the 500k pots if it was to given the chance.
yeah, we didn't get the bridge pickup demo on 250k
You all, noticed that little "leave out" with the bridge pickup on the 250K pot demo, as well - huh? My "gut" tells me that he did that on purpose and that no-one would notice... but, not saying he did for sure. Personally, Had he switched on the Bridge Pickup, I think the 250s would have sounded "fuller"... at least to my ears. I found that the 500K's sounded much too "tinny" on the high end. To be honest... I don't play 6 string guitar... only Bass, Lap Steel, Mandolin & learning Harmonica.
Hi Dylan, Thanks you for everything you do!
I am restoring a 1989 Korean E9xxxxx Stratocaster.
The small pots are good quality, 500K's with a .33 cap.
The volume is linear, so you can essentially control treble bright to dark tones with just turning the volume down slightly.
I have a Caparison 8 string that only has a single volume knob. It came with a 500k pot, which sounded fine through a high gain setting, but the extra brightness of only having a single 500k pot made the cleans STERILE sounding, so I swapped it for a 250K pot and now the guitar sounds great clean and when I'm playing high gain I already run an overdrive that boosts the treble anyway.
500k pots going into my telecaster and stratocaster now. Thank you. Definitely sounds fuller.
For some of my guitars I wire each pickup direct to the output and have separate output jacks for each pickup. That way you can have separate amps for each pickup, which can sound massive when you blend/pan them. It helps to have a master compressor/limiter as a safety net to level any significant EQ or volume jumps when switching.
In all my WRHB guitars. I put in 1Meg vol and 500K tone pots. that's my go to. I've tried most WRHB's and really like the Lollars and Novak makes a nice one too.
Your guitar did have a fullness at 500k that sounded very pleasing. Thanks, and thanks to Dustin for his info!
This new content is super good. This channel has come a long way!
Really nice explanation of how the pots work. I just subscribed.
Definitely go with the 500k on that white squier. Huge difference. Sounds really nice. Thanks for sharing. I appreciate it buddy.
For what it's worth: I use 500k pots with my Fender Noiseless 3 pickups. I also put them in my Tele. It has
Dimarzio stacked single coils. It, as you mentioned opens them up which I like.
I really love that block inlay vibe. I've thought about swapping pots on my Jazzmaster, but I'm hesitant because it already sounds amazing.
I had 250k pots in my Jazzmaster,it still sounded amazing...yes I will put them back in...try it
I just saw the announcement that EMG is making an exclusively Jazzmaster set of active pickups and have seen a couple reviews on them and so far sound pretty dope. Can't wait for the official release and give them a shot myself
If you like the way it sounds I would leave it as is. Now if you don't like the sweep or the tension of the pots, that's different. Maybe you have a volume pot that's very stiff and awkward to use when doing swells, you would probably be happier with a low friction pot of the same value. Or if you have a low friction pot that your hand bumps into, try a medium friction pot etc.
@@countzero5150 I'm doing one worse...I'm buying a second Jazzmaster (affinity series this time) specifically to be a mod platform. 😁
Just lift the ground tab on the volume pot, and put a 250k resistor between it and ground and see if you like the sound.
250k is darker, more “natural”, and sounds better to me.
The 500k sounded smoother and had more treble but lacked the grit of 250k.
Maybe I’m weird. I think it’s the natural part that I like about 250k but could just be what I’m used to hearing.
But definitely 500k is clearer, sparklier, and that’s not a bad thing! Good video!
I like the 250k pots too! I guess what’s more important is to know what different values do. Not which is better since that will always be subjective.
@@janmarlpaulrodriguez exactly. I could use both for different applications.
Had the same reaction almost instantly. Asa he started playing after the swap. The sound preference for me is 250k. That's a relief. Saves me a trip to the tech. Can get a better set of wireless now. lol
Heresies... I'd go 1meg
Nothing wrong with that, it's all personal preference, which I remembered the hard way.
I'm the opposite and like the bright sound.
Made a huge mistake when I got back into playing years ago. After watching a bunch of the Les Paul RUclipsrs that lived and died by the rich and warm sound that it's supposed to be, I spent way too much time and money finding and wiring pickups until I mimicked *their preferred sound.
My dumbass spent a month trying to convince myself that I loved it.. before inevitably putting my setup back in and swearing never another "upgrade" to someone else's preference.
Like beer, restaurants, guns and everything else people fight about, If it's good to you, it's the right one.
Did this one very well. Yep when it comes to passive electronics you can only subtract frequency in the circuit, your only way to add frequency is through your physical input - but you can only play so hard haha
I am building a telecaster with a neck humbucker and bridge single coil. I am clearing out my parts drawer to build it, and I ended up with a pair of old Alpha pots--375k volume and 500k tone. Will do a demo when it is built.
3:45 all potentiometers are variable resistors. Wiring a pot as a volume just makes all of the signal go to ground instead of through a capacitor then to ground in the case of a tone pot. They work in the exact same way.
The only difference is the tone pot bleeds highs to ground. Volume pots bleeds the entire signal to ground. In both cases, the pots are variable resistors.
4:30 you’re really over complicating this.
Pots are resistors. The higher the resistor value, the stronger the resistor. That’s it.
A 250K pot is a weak resistor. Therefore, it will allow more high end signal to bleed to ground. So if you have bright pickups, using low value resistors will darken them up. If you have dark pickups, using high value resistors will brighten them up.
Why? Because high value resistors are strong resistors, so they will do a better job of resisting the high from being bled to ground.
That’s it. Don’t over complicate. You’ll just confuse people.
Agreed. 500K sounds better to my ears. How do they affect P-90s? Have a G&L Ascari with P-90s. Might need an upgrade.
I put 500k ots in a telecaster to see how it would be and I kept them there ! Brought out more treble in the neck pickup that sounded fab and the bridge can be a bit harsh so I just turn the pot down halfway or so.
Another thing to consider is rarely is a pot valued at what it's sold. Many "250k" are around 220k. "500k" can measure anywhere from 420k-520k and that's even buying so-called measured tolerance higher priced Bourns or CTS. Basically, that mass source production pot on your volume could be the wet blanket covering your tone.
I mean… if you buy shit parts, but we use low tolerance stuff so it’s not an issue
@DylanTalksTone I only buy low tolerance as well.
folks, remember that in Alternating Currents ("AC", like audio signals) we not only talk about mere resistance, we talk about impedance (Z). What happens when using different pots values is that we modify the output impedance of the guitar (pickup Z in parallel with pot vol resistance). And the impedance, along with the parasitic capacitances in the coil itself, in the cable, , etc, varies with frequency.
The coupling between the input impedance of the amp/pedal and the output impedance of the guitar also influences (that's why pedals that don't have "true bypass" lose a little in highs, it's all about impedances (like the "inverted" wah and Gilmour's seagulls)
Tipical Z of strat pickups (alone) are near 800-900 kohms (in the resonant frecuency, typical 10-11kHz), When we put a vol potentiometer, that resistance dominates the total impedance, so the output impedance of the guitar will now be a value close to the real value of the volume potentiometer
(the total value 2 or more impedances/resistances in parallel will always be a little less than the smallest of them)
Thanks for this. I really like how these pickups sound.
You make perfect sense sir. That's why I replaced all three of my 250k's in my Jazz with 1meg Linears. I want the full potential of the single coils and If the tone turns out to be too harsh or aggressive, then of course I'll have the option to dial it back.
a pot then is kind of like a mirror that reflects the sound of the pickups toward the output, and you can either fade it out til its invisible and there's no signal, or fade it in and reflect everything into the output. but more resistance means a more reflective mirror.
Well now I have a huge desire to look into the guts of my Peavey Tracer and see what's in there. It has a HSS pickup configuration.
QUESTION: Is it possible to install a 1 Meg potentiometer for example and wire resistors to a three way switch and change between 250k 500k 1m
Boy, did I learn a lot with this video! Thank you so much!
Great video. Very informative. One small improvement could be if you played the same riffs & chords for both demos ?
just another great, super-informative video. Thanks again!
dude... you are the hero we need and we want
I totally agree with you. In fact, I have a 2000 American Fender Strat Deluxe w/SSS and I'm gonna put a pair of humbuckers in it with the 500K pots. Thanks for the incredibly Clear explanation. 👍
I just saw this video - excellent content, brother.
I've been told by reputable guitar techs that there is no difference between the signal path of a 250k setup versus a 500k (or 1 meg) setup when the pots are wide-open. Is this correct? Does the difference surface only when the pots are somewhere between the extremes of the sweep?
The 500 sounded louder for sure but I liked the tone of the 250 better it was more mellow for me but I trust you that the 500 are better. Thanks man!
For a tele I would always change the 3-way switch to a 4 way and add a phase switch when changing the wiring I also use pot with an off position so I can eliminate the pot altogether,
I once upon a time I tinkered with pot and capacitor values in my main squeeze strat and would always come back to original values. The quality of the pots and caps improved, purely by accident. Clarostat pots and these big orange caps at normal strat specs. Forty tears later it still makes me happy. Experiment, explore, enjoy, find Home.
I put 1meg pots in my 72 thinline deluxe with Dimarzio bluesbuckers. Best decision I ever made with that guitar. It’s got tons of presence, sounds super clean, and when it’s too bright just roll the tone pot back to like 5-7.
500k seems to add more mids and a more pronounced attack too. I personally don't like that in a Tele. Great vid
Definitely a much fuller sound with the 500k's, almost Strat-like. As always, interesting and informative.
Not at all strat like... Complete opposite of that. Strats are thin and quacky, have no warmth or dimension at all.
"Strat-like"??? smh 😆
The Interaction of the Cap and Pot values determines the roll-off frequency, and has a great influence on Tone...
Learned a good bit of info from this video, thanks man!
I have pretty much the same view as you. I much rather have the guitar be too bright out of the gate and I can tame that with eq or the tone pot. If the guitar is dark or muddy out of the gate then in my opinion and experience it’s almost improbable to create what I call that good treble. I also agree the mid range and the cut just gets bigger with the 500k. I’ve been using 500k in all of my guitars including typical telecasters for a long time. Nice video. Well done.
I watched a TV Jones video on his TV Savalas Telecaster. If I remember correctly he puts a treble bleed cap on 500K volume pots. I like 500k Volume and 250k tone pots.
8:53 Sound comparison
i did dig this. i agree with the idea that "once you take it away, you can't really put it back". my only request would be to let us know where the tone pots were set and what the caps were. and what happens when you dial it back... but, thanks ! well worth a listen.
I did a similar experiment on my Jazzmaster (with WRHBs) I moded the lead circuit with 500 k and the rhythm with both 1 Meg pots. i couldn't decide which one I like better so I left it like that. I use the 1 megs for leads
I can't hear a difference so I downloaded the audio and put it in Audacity. Direct comparison with hi-fi headphones and still no clear difference. I'm probably going old and deaf so I took a plot of the frequency spectrum on two similar strums and… still barely any notable difference. Both cut after 3kHz and the part between 1 and 3k is similar, the slope after 3k is the same.
Whatever could be heard in the room has not come through RUclips.
Hey, thanks for the non-subjective perspective......................
Seth Lover originally paired the WRH pickups with 1MΩ pots. That's a key part of what makes them "wide range." :)
Great video as always. Thank you, you have way about you in making these subjects fun & easy to fully understand. 👏
I'm here because: I grew up a Les Paul guy and at 38 I got 3 Teles and love how bright they are. Now my Les Paul seems very dark. I'm hoping 1 meg pots and .022 bleed circuits will help.
i'm always a sucker for brighter tones... i just snagged an old squier strat for modding/mangling, and that came with 500k pots for the single coils, which surprised me. Also on your tele there, that maple fretboard/ block inlay is the coolest, i wish more fenders & squiers had that...
Good call.
That's actually alot better than just a good call. Looks 1,000% cooler than regg'ler ol' black dots. Id think it work for/against whatever aesthetic you'd be going for depending on what colors you're working with.
I kinda can't decide if I'd prefer those old pearl style, or black (to bank off this Tele's white body. Pearl can appear dingey(is that the word?-kindof dirty-faded, rhymes with Benji) so pearl might not be a good idea. Black is usually a safe bet. Pearl however, (now that I think about it)might just make the whole guitar look unkempt and tacky.
lol Wouldn't wanna be dicking around on stage with a malnourished looking guitar.
Suit yourself.
Finally. I've been wanting someone to do this AB for a.while, only with bass guitars. But this was full of information that remains helpful. Thoughts about this same discussion involving bass guitar?!.🙏
I have the same Thinline Tele and the first thing I did was swap out the pots and cap with 500 pot/.022 cap. Some folks even like to put 1m pots in, but I've never tried that because I honestly don't see the benefit in opening up things that much.
Very Informative, Thanks!
I do go straight out now heh. Straight to a processor with no volume/tone etc. and do any EQ work I need there. I like it. Get all the information available IMO and process it after.
yo my name is Dylan too!! Always good to see another Dylan
That squire is really sweet the tone is sweet and natural that having been said .
Dylan./don't quit winding pickups!!! lol great vid dude thank you !!!
I completely agree with your philosophy on pots, I use 500k in everything I modify, if not a 1meg. It's so easy to take out or compress down some of that high end with the tone circuit, a pedal, or with simple EQ on your amp or effects unit. I would rather be turning down my treble than constantly trying to boost something that is weak, which is almost always a lost cause. Using a 250k pot is like hacking off the high end of your tone with a hatchet, using the tone circuit or something else is like using a scalpel.
Great explanation, I learned a lot. Couldn't notice you wearing an Indian hat--I hope you are enjoying yours as much as I am enjoying my Pursuit.
i knew this on paper . . adding something to circuit puts more resisatance etc. But when you explained how this is regards to tone, help me understaning more about electric guitars.
250 sounds more fendery single coily sound / but but 500 brings out more of the humbucker sound, and it has more layers . . . I guess one can play with tone n vol controls to get that sound the 250 makes.
Thanks for explaining the difference,,, you make perfect sense!And the 500k pots sound so much fuller,,, I’m with you,,, I say put 500k pots in every thing!
Very informative. Great video Dylan.
This guitar tech stuff is all nice and dandy, but that funk track at 2:20 is killer, especially when the drums and brass come in! Is it an original or a backing track? Or is it a regular song that I can find somewhere?
I did put on 500k volume on a G&L Legacy. People warned me it would sound too bright - I don't think so. But I also installed a switch to change the cap to .22 or .33, so I can roll off just a bit of the high end if I need to. I hardly ever turn the tone down, and if so, not by a lot. I do use DiMarzio Area 58 and 61 and a Crunch lab Humbucker. SCs are noiseless, allegedly those swallow some brightness and work better with 500k potis - just putting out, what I read. 250k on my Tele makes the Humbucker sound kind of like a Gibson neck HB with tone turned all the way down. Definitely something missing.
Wow, the Funkadelic Music! I am in the market for push pull pots for my Les Paul. I needed this video.
500k pots for me, looks like, it has 3 pickups. And yeah, those 500k pots sound beautiful.
Fender recommends 1 meg pots for their CuNiFe wide range humbuckers. Would be interesting to hear that in this mix.
Dylan thank you man for time and experience. Have you tried 1 meg potetiometer? I loved the 500k. Yes it moved the cue of the sonic spectrum. The pickups had more "presence" cover more frequencies? Thank you again Dylan.
I had my headphones cranked up and couldn't hear much difference, that is until you started flipping the pickup switch (with the 500Ks). I couldn't tell what you had selected with the 250Ks. Was it neck pickup all the way? Certainly, switching pickups make more of a change than playing with the pots.
My MIM 69 thinline had 1M pots. The bright spank was so off the wall that I never enjoyed playing it. I put 250k pots in to tame it a bit and it became my fav guitar.
Thanks for this, especially the nugget about the volume pot contributing more to the high-end roll off than the tone.
For a SSH strat, I decided on two volumes - 250k/singles and 500k hum. 500k on the singles was just too brittle.
I used a 250k for the tone, and I’m happy with the result. The 500k retains more brightness for the HB, and the bright Eric Johnson Neck/Mid singles chime nicely and aren’t brittle.
That's an interesting combo. I know very little about pots, so on my HSS Strat, as my post above mentions, I'm putting in a better humbucker. Does each pickup gets its own pot? If so, for an HSS would you recommend a 500k + 250k + 250k config, or replace each with 500k?
@@OhGawdHesGotAGun I think in theory, and as Dylan mentions, you can use 500k for everything. My particular single coils are already quite bright, and when I had a 500k master volume those singles became undesirably bright.
I don’t mind two volumes, as there are interesting options to preset volumes like a LP. Now when I play through my Marshall Jubilee, I get nicely tamed singles and a fairly bright humbucker.
The 250k pot for master tone is working very well. Your mileage may vary, and different pickups can make all the difference (inherently bright or dark pickups)
@@jimmclaren1 Thank you! "Tamed singles" sounds about right for a Strat (and for a porn movie title, lol).
I appreciate your advice. I'll go for 500k for the humbucker only (if it doesn't already have a 500). Not sure how coil splitting comes into the equation, I know there are some that are modular (iterate between 500k & 200k or whatever).
Thanks!
@@OhGawdHesGotAGun I just used a 250k push-pull for the master tone. Used the switch on it to split the HB. Have fun!
I've got a 2018 American Performer HSS Strat & I'm not a big fan of the 'Double Tap' humbucker (it sounds like a scalded cat giving birth) so I'm getting a local tech to put a Shawbucker 2 humbucker in its place. I miss the tone I got from my Tele Deluxe so I thought I'd replace my humbucker with one of its double Shawbuckers.
I might lose my coil splitting ability but I don't care that much. I don't know what pots are in there now for volume, but I'm impressed with the 500k sound here. I've only been playing about 4yrs so I'd appreciate any "If you were me" advice on this. Would you, IYWM, get him to replace the existing pots with 500's? It's got 2 Yosemite single-coils & the Double-Tap humbucker. Also putting on a 10-way switch while it's being operated on.
I'd do this all myself but I've never soldered before. I'll risk destruction on my Harley Benton, but not my Strat.
There is so much more definition with the 500k pots ! Awesome comparison !