Pot recommendations for riding the guitar's volume pot?

[Steve in Florida]

Hi all,

What can I do to add more "usable" volume range on my guitar's volume pot using a two-humbucker guitar through a Trainwreck Express-style amp?

My Strat works well riding the volume knob... the 250k pot rolls off nicely, and much of the "sweep" of the volume pot is "usable" volume... You can really play with soul and emotion this way.

My two-humbucker guitar is much more challenging...

Regular 500k volume pots are basically on or off, not much usable range on the knob. And they roll off the highs too quickly.

To fix those issues, I've done a few things...

To fix the lack of "sweep" I currently have a RS Guitarworks superpot, which seems to have a more usable sweep than a standard 500k pot.

And to fix the speedy treble roll-off, I have a good treble-bleed cap/resistor in place. That fixes the treble roll-off issue... no worries now on the treble roll off.

The sweep of the RS superpot just isn't quite doing it though... You have to roll the knob from 10 down to about 2 to get to Trainwreck cleans... and even then its not exactly pristine -- even when thinning out the humbucker completely with "inside coils" or with the neck humbucker in parallel mode.

I really like my Strat volume knob, with a full usable range of soul...

I would really like to get more range out of my two-humbucker guitar's volume knob. I would like to "ride the volume knob" like I can on my Strat.

Any suggestions or success stories out there?

Thanks in advance,

Steve

[vibratoking]

What can I do to add more "usable" volume range on my guitar's volume pot using a two-humbucker guitar through a Trainwreck Express-style amp?

If your pot is coming on too quickly, then the only solution is to replace the pots with ones that have different taper. You can go after the original CTS pots from the late 50s, but you probably can't find or afford them. The next best pots are the Gibson Historic pots. They're cheap and good. Don't use the RS Superpot no matter what you hear.

[Steve in Florida]

Great.

Just ordered some Gibson Historic pots.

Found your thread here: https://tubeamparchive.com/viewtopic.php?t=16555

Good stuff. Thanks.

Steve

[billyz]

Make sure to do the vintage style wiring too. Those pots are a must. I would forget the the treble bleed cap too, you won't need it once you do the the vintage wiring.

[geetarpicker]

I've been telling folks for years that it's all in the pots! That said, yes Gibson finally got the specs right on the current issue Historic pots even better than the aftermarket folks had been trying to do. As mentioned you may not need treble bleeds, unless your pickups are quite a bit higher wind then say a typical 8k PAF. 50s wiring will helps also, as the tones then act as mild mid scoop controls and also give a bit more volume reduction. It's an odd side effect of the old wiring setup but it can be used as an advantage. Check out my video using a stock wired 50s Les Paul into an original Express, perhaps skip to about the 6:00 point in the video: http://youtu.be/Uc3Xi6aAG80

[Steve in Florida]

Thanks for all the replies!

Glen, your YouTube clips got me going down the Express-type "clean-to-mean" path...

50s-style wiring is not an option in my setup... so I can't "take advantage" of that side effect.

Here's where I am:

I've been through numerous "clean-to-mean"-type amps, struggling through the good and bad, and have finally found the perfect amp for me... a Komet Concorde.

The Strat does fantastic with this amp... My main Strat has just one basic 250k CTS volume pot... No tone knobs, no caps or treble bleeds. I get great "clean to mean" across the full sweep of pot.

My two humbucker guitar is not a Les Paul. It is set up similarly to the Strat... Just one volume pot. No other knobs.

The clean to mean is more elusive on this guitar...

I turn the amp's volume down with this guitar to compensate for the slightly higher output of the pickups. (I'm guessing the DC resistance is in the 10-11 range on them.)

I use a 5-way switch wired like this:

1) Neck Humbucker
2) Neck pickup in parallel (for a fake single-coil sound)
3) N + B seres
4) Inside coils parallel (for a fake strat quack)
5) Bridge Humbucker

I do use the 2 and 4 positions as the "cleans"

With the CTS pot that was originally in there, it seemed like going from 10 to 8 on the volume knob had a major treble cut.

Turning the volume knob down to 2 or 3 was where you could get cleans... But the volume drop was unfortunately pretty huge... the "in between" positions (2 or 4) weren't actually that clean... and the treble roll-off was so bad these positions are basically unusable.

I look forward to trying out the Gibson historic pot.

I will try it without a treble bleed at first. I may still need it (with tiny values), as its hard to imagine a simple Gibson pot improving that treble roll off by that much.

Anyway, this might be more info than you're interested in...

The pot should arrive later this week. I will let you know how it goes.

Thanks to all for your insights...

Steve

[Mark]

I bought several Historic pots and the only problem I had with them was the value of the pots. The Historic pots were 450K and under, this wasn't a problem with the tone controls and it fact it was even somewhat desirable (IMHO) as I now had a useful sweep over the range of the pot.

I'm told by Ron Ellis that a volume control under 450K isn't desirable for a volume control, so for this reason the pots never made it into the guitar as volume controls.

I saw a post on this forum that suggested that Gibson had this issue in hand and it was at this time I purchased my pots. Unfortunately as previously mentioned all the Historic pots were under 450K.

I thought it best to inform you of this fact prior to purchase.

[geetarpicker]

Yep the ones I put in my Historic SG were about 440-450k. That said my SG was a little bright and I think the lower value actually helped the guitar's tone. I have a friend that more recently bought some Historic pots and they were closer to 500k so perhaps the more recent batches are running higher ohms wise. If your pickups are already dark yep, you don't want a lower resistance pot as it will make it darker still. On the other hand if your pickups are a bit too bright, lower values (like 450k) may work out great.

[redshark]

When I bought my historic pots values were all over the place but I used it to my advantage. The lowest value 450k was used for the bridge pickup volume and the highest 510 k was used for the neck pickup volume making the bridge pickup not as bright and the neck pickup not as dark.