Which Pots?

[dude]

Yeah, I'm gonna do 4 single coil pickups (so, pretty much 2 humbuckers), but they'll all be wired in parallell. I'll have one master volume and one master tone knob. What resistance value should I get for my volume knob?

[Samba Pa Ti]

500k should be fine.

[donbenjy]

I'm thinking 250k might sound better actually. The dc resistance of the whole wiring will be half that of a regular single coil (1/9k *4 = 1/4.5k) so 500k would be like using a 1 meg on a single coil!

"Dude", are you having this as hard wired, or switchable?

[dude]

switchable

[donbenjy]

you think it's possible that you'll have a humbucker wired normally, with the coils in series? In that case, 500k is gonna be the only thing you can use!

Edited June 2, 2007 by donbenjy

[Logical Frank]

I would go 250K--or at least try that first. Two single coils in parallel (like, say, a tele in the middle position) would normally use 250K. So it would follow that two sets of two parallel single coils in parallel would also use 250K.

[donbenjy]

yeah, I thought that, but if he's got a HB in series too, it's gonna sound well muddy...I just put a 1meg pot on the motherbucker (4 coils) in my strat and it's opened up so much! I've got a P90 in the neck and that sounds fine with 1meg

[Samba Pa Ti]

every guitar ive owned uses 500k pots (teles/strats), i really cannot tell the difference between 250k and 500k since i dont use the tone/volume controls all that much,

its a trivial matter unless you are going to be dipping the volume a lot i cant see how a 1meg/500k/250k would matter (if its full up/set to 10 it wont be changing the guitars sound anyway).

[JohnH]

250k or 500k will be fine, but Id vote for 250k.

People use 500k with series Hb's because it puts less load on these higher impedance pickups, which causes less loss of high treble when at full volume. The down side is that at reduced volume, the guitar is more vulnerable to treble loss due to cable capacitance.

But with you parallel wiring, your pup impedance is 1/4 of a series version, hence it can drive 250k pots with little loss, and these will then perform better at low volume. I think tha 250k on the tone pots will, in this case, also give you a more consistent sweep of tonal change, wheres 500k will be more concentrated to the end of the range of tone pot turn.

John

[dude]

Thanks for the help.

[black_labb]

personally id go 1 meg pots, as they can be turned down to 500k and 250 k for the tone. why put the tone pot on for 250 when you wont use anything but full. why not use something that has the ability to go brighter and then put it where you want it. might as well not even have the knob there and just bleed put a 250k resistor to ground in the circuit through the tone cap.