helppp!! volume/tone pots?

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mikeanniston

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i just recently bought a 1meg pot for my telecaster. i have a dimarzio mini tone zone in it, and it was always really muddy to me, then i realized it still had the original 250k pots for the tone and volume pots. i just went out a little while ago and bought a 1 meg pot, and the guy at the guitar store said to put it in replace of the volume pot. now reading over something from dimarzio that came with the pickup, it mentions something about putting the pot in replacement of the original TONE pot. so which is it? do i replace the VOLUME pot or the TONE pot?
 
I'm no professional but...

It seems like you want a different TONE out of your pickup... Which, I would assume, would mean to replace the tone pot.

(Not trying to hijack, just curious... :o )
Why did you get a 1meg pot? I was under the assumption, after seeing lots of specs on lots of guitars with humbuckers, that 500k was the norm for these...
 
You'll see the biggest difference by using a 1 meg pot for the volume control. Using it for the tone pot will mostly just change things when you turn your tone pot down, but if you put it in for the volume pot you will make your guitar quite noticeably brighter.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
i was gonna go with 500 but the 1 meg is just that much more clearer. the dude at the guitar store did it with one of his guitars, and he said it was like before he changed it playing with ear muffs, then after he changed it it was like taking the ear muffs off. but he had said to put it on the volume knob? so im not sure?
 
The way a guitar is wired, when the volume pot is turned up all the way, the total resistance of the volume pot is shunting the output. If you double that resistance, output will go up, and since the setup forms a type of filter, changing the resistance value will change the tonal qualities of the output. Using the formula shown here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_pass_filter raising the resistance in the high pass filter formed will change the cutoff frequency at which bass begins to roll off, giving a different tone when the volume is maxxed. (There are capacitors in series with the circuit later down the line which complete this filter, even if there isn't one in series with the output in the guitar, which there sometimes is.)

The tone pot and tone capacitor have absolutely no effect on the guitar when the tone knob is turned all the way up, period.

Not a guitar pro, but I was an eletrician for awhile...
 
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