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Pots for pickups


Biohazard

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Hi, I'm going to be installing two humbuckers, one in the neck and one in the bridge of my new guitar when it arrives. For pot values I was planning on using the standard 500K for tone and volume. What sound will this give compared to two 1M pots? Thanks for any information. Also if I use 1M what capacitor on the tone pot should I go to, or will this not change even though the pot value is not 500K?Hope that made sense.

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the difference between linear taper and logarithmic or audio taper is in the way the signla gets increased. in a linear taper the number on the knob corrseponds to the strenght of the signal and the output difference between any 2 values is the same, so the volume increases at a straight line.

in an audio taper, the increase in output is a curved line. which the output increases at smaller intervals near the beggining, and larger intervals near the end (i.e the difference in output strenght between "1" and "2" is less then the dif between "9" and "10"), so basically if it was graphed out it would be a curved line

im sure that was extremely confusing but i cant seem to find the diagram i have seen before demonstrating this

as regards to sound it shouldnt have any effect besides that the output increases at different rates when you rotate the knob of the pot

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YMMV?

"your mileage may vary", meaning that other people don't necessarily hear things the way I do, nor does everyone have the same tolerance for noise.

An audio taper pot is going to respond the way you're used to a volume control working. It takes approximately 10 times the actual sound pressure level for a noise to sound twice as loud to most human ears - audio taper simulates that change over the pot's range, so for instance "5" sounds half as loud as "10" - if it goes to "11", then all bets are off. :D

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hmm in my book i dont' know if i can hear the difference between linear and log, but i will say this much i have two guitars that although not exactly sounding the same they do play similar and sound similar enough to warrant a test.. i rewired one with log and one with lin. and had a friend install the actual pieces.[ie i wire all my controls and switches to a pcb board and then wire the pickups to it.] i waited till he was done. and tried them both out. couldn't sonicly tell the difference but the blue guitar just didnt' have the same sound when i rolled down the volume a bit.. so i tried it with the other one and it had that nice smooth sound i was used too.. took off the backs and guess what.

The lin pot was the one, that i had chosen as my favorite.

anyway this was my personal test and shouldn't be confused with an actual scientific test in any manner.

just personal experience sharing.

:D

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Here's a description of the difference between audio taper and linear (I don't remember where I copied this from):

What is an audio taper? To answer this question, one must understand how the human ear senses sound. The human being experiences loudness as a sensation in the brain. The physical measure of loudness is known as intensity. Intensity is expressed in Watts/meter2 (W/m2) or decibels (dB). The human ear responds to sound in a logarithmic fashion. The smallest change in sound that the human ear can detect is 1dB. For this reason, the dB scale, which is based on a logarithmic scale, is used. The audio taper panel control produces a change in output on a logarithmic scale giving the human ear the perception of sound intensity increasing in a linear fashion. Audio tapers are typically used in volume control applications. Modified linear tapers are used in lighting control applications.

I play at two volume settings 10 and 0 (0 for tuning, usually) so it wouldn't matter a bit to me but I still use audio taper for volume anyway.

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it really makes no difference physically, just go with what you thign sounds better, but adio taper was made for audio, so if you want go with it, it really is just a preference as an audio taper kinda "rolls up" to the 10, and is supposed to sound more natural to the human ear, as described above. It really delves into psychology and this field really varies from person to person, so the best advice is to pick what sounds best to you, not that it makes much of a difference

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If you're like me and you don't actually use the volume for anything other than full on or full off, then it won't matter at all. If you like to do some changes with the volume during songs, then it will make a difference but it may only be minor.

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