Can a pot be wired to blend two pickups?

[Scott Roc]

I've got a new frankenbass project and on this one I am not allowed to spend any money.

It's an old Kay p style body, and I am routing it for a second set of P pups.
My question is can a pot be wired to blend the two pickups in place of a switch.

So all the way counter clockwise it would be 100% neck pup, all the way clockwise would be 100% bridge pup, and in the middle would be an even mix of the two.

Is this possible using a 250k pot?

[line6man]

What you want is a blend pot... A regular pot will not work.

You should also upgrade to all 500K pots, in order to keep your tone the same...

[JTE]

Yeah, it's possible, but it doesn't work real well. I got a schematic out of an old Guitar Player Magazine (around 1985 or so- well before there were ANY bass mags) that showed how to make a standard pot do that. I installed it for one of my students, but the taper wasn't very smooth, and the balance was awful.

You're better off spending $10 or so for a real dedicated blend pot- it's two pots in one body. You wire it so it works like a typical Fender Jazz Bass volume control set up except it's all under one knob. At the center both PUPs are on all the way. As you roll it one way from the center, the neck PUP gets quiter and the bridge PUP stays on full. As you go back from that extreme to the center it rolls the neck PUP back up to where they're both on all the way at the center, and as you keep going it turns the other PUP down.

The problem with using a regular pot is that at the blend position, both PUPs are going through the resistor in the pot so they're both attenuated some.

jte

[Scott Roc]

Well in that case I think I'll just wire volume pots for each pup, and one shared tone pot. Like I said I can't spend any money on this project, that would feel like cheating.

[line6man]

Originally Posted by Scott Roc

Well in that case I think I'll just wire volume pots for each pup, and one shared tone pot. Like I said I can't spend any money on this project, that would feel like cheating.

May i ask why you cant spend any money on this project?

As i have stated before on these forums, i am not a fan of blend pots, as i am more of a pickup selector switch guy.
However, i think that 2 volumes is generally the best way to wire a bass with 2 pickups.

Keep in mind that a second volume pot is going to make your instrument darker sounding.

2 250K pots is 125K, adding a third will drop that down to 83.33K.
If you want to go brighter, all 500K pots would be equal to 166.67K

[Scott Roc]

Originally Posted by line6man

May i ask why you cant spend any money on this project?

As i have stated before on these forums, i am not a fan of blend pots, as i am more of a pickup selector switch guy.
However, i think that 2 volumes is generally the best way to wire a bass with 2 pickups.

Keep in mind that a second volume pot is going to make your instrument darker sounding.

2 250K pots is 125K, adding a third will drop that down to 83.33K.
If you want to go brighter, all 500K pots would be equal to 166.67K

Cause its fun to do more with less, I already have basses that I gig with that Ive dropped money on, now I want to do something with the left over parts.