Matching Proper Tone and Volume Pots to Pickups

[fremenblue]

Is there any kind of guideline for what value of pots to use for different output of pickups? I'm trying to decide what value tone and volume pots to use with a pickup that has 500+mV output, and also what cap to use.

[fremenblue]

While I'm waiting for help on this, I'll relate what I do know on the subject.

First, the pickup I'm wiring is a humbucker, 500mV output, unknown DC resistance.

Right now it's wired with no cap, no tone, only a volume pot. Also a DPDT switch wired for front blade/both/back blade. I'm not sure if the "both" is series or parallel. I'm going to rewire this into series/parallel. I think I'm losing something with the present wiring.

Smaller number caps are brighter-sounding. Higher-value pots are brighter-sounding.

Industry standard is 250k for single and split coil, 500k for humbuckers. Is this the volume or tone pot standard, though, or both?

250k pots blend better and are less "on/off" and also darker-sounding.

Volume pots are audio taper, tone pots are linear.

What would be the point of going to a 1 meg pot but then using a .1mfd cap? The pot is super-bright and the cap is super-not-bright. And would this be a tone pot or volume pot? Why do a one-size tone pot but a different size volume pot? Ie. with a stacked 250/500k pot.

The end game is two humbucker pickups wired like a '62 Jazz with the addition of series/parallel switches for each pup. I may or may not wire them as dual outputs.

[fremenblue]

I'll just continue enjoying having a chat with myself.

Dimarzio tech says that the X2N-B pickup is best used with a 500k pot, but didn't say if that was for tone, volume, or both. I'm assuming that it's at least the tone pot, since they also recommended starting with a .022 cap, though it's a matter of preference.

I'm wondering then if I can just use the 62 Jazz stack pots, 250k/500k. I'll use a .022 Orange Drop and see if I can manage the mod to keep the tone pots from "crosstalking" if I don't simply put dual outputs in the bass.

What's the functional difference between 250k and 500k volume pots? Brighter? Louder? Hmmm. . ..back to the search then.

[fremenblue]

Hey, how ya doin'?
Great! You have somethin' for me?
Yeah, as a matter of fact I do. Check this out. Use 500k pots for both, put in your .022 cap and if you don't like the 500k you can always mod it down to 250k for pennies versus buyin' another stacked pot at 10 to 13 bucks. If you wanna run both pots out of one jack, just use the 200k-300k resistor inline to the jack from each volume pot. Otherwise, run your dual outs. If it's still not as dark/warm as you want, you can always go back and put in a .047 or higher cap.

Hey, thanks man! You TB guys rawk!