Do Pots Contribute to Tone in an Active Bass?

[elpelotero]

I have a Seymour Duncan STC3a preamp in my Warwick. Previously it had the stock MEC stuff. The shaft on the new stacked pot is too big and the stacked knobs do not fit, leaving the shaft out in the open.

I'm getting the bass fixed up and the technician mentioned possibly having to retrofit one of the MEC pots so that the knobs would properly fit on the shaft.

Would this detract from the tone at all???? Are the frequencies locked into the preamp, or the pots as well?

[line6man]

No.

If you want to get crazy about it, you can argue the difference in thermal noise between resistive element compositions, or contact noise between wattages or something, but you would never hear a difference. A pot is simply a variable resistor. Not many of the technical specifications are going to matter for this application, except, questionably, the tolerance.

Now on the other hand, the taper of a pot makes a big difference in the way it performs when you adjust it. If you are using EQ pots, those are usually linear, so there is no worry about the quality of the taper.

[SGD Lutherie]

Why not just get new knobs? The MEC pots have smaller than normal shafts, but you can get knobs to fit the Duncan. That's a standard size. The STC3 even comes with knobs. I understand you might not want to use those black knobs, but you will know what size to order. Im sure you can find matching knobs.

Or have your tech drill out the Warwick knobs on a drill press to fit the Duncan shafts. That's a simple thing to do. If you tech can't do that find a new tech.

Tone circuits do require certain value pots, so if the circuit specifies 100k, you might get different results with 50k for example, because there are other fixed resistors (and caps) in the circuit that make up that tone control, and it was designed with those pot values. The results would be a different amount of boost and cut, but the center frequencies might shift as well.

So I'd be cautious about substituting the MEC pots for the Duncan's unless they are the same value. Get new knobs or drill out the stock knobs. But knobs are cheap.