stacked pots problem?

[XUSMC1775x]

i have been looking at the Fender vintage 62 ri Jazz Bass for awhile and may purchase it, i noticed that it only had two knobs; so i looked it up awhile ago and found out that all early Jazz Basses had these and the stacked pots were short lived. so my question is, is their a problem with stacked pots? how come they were so short lived? im hoping the only reason they changed to vol/vol/tone is because its easier to manufacture and/or cost effective. because i dont want to purchase this bass a find out stacked pots aren't good. any answers are greatly appreciated, thatnks.

[wcriley]

A friend of mine has a Jazz he bought in the 60s and used exclusivly from then until a few years ago. It still has the original pots and they function fine.

[Kmay]

I just got a 94 era jazz bass plus that come with stacked pots and mine work awesome! They were hanging on each other, but a quick search on TB solved that issue.

[bassmeknik]

Don't be afraid of stacked pots, they work just fine and are no more or less reliable than single pots. Occasionally they hang on each other when they wear out but that takes years and the repair is cheap. Not a reason to not buy a nice bass IMO.

[JTE]

Fender went to the 3-knob VVT system probably (there's no real documentation of exactly why) because the 3-knob system uses parts that were common across almost all the instruments they were making at the time, and because the stacked knob originals used resistors to prevent the controls from interacting. Those resistors also reduce the output. When Fender started the Vintage Series in 1981, they elected not to use the resistors. The controls on the VS '62 Jazz interact now.

No reason to avoid getting one just because of the control setup. If you don't like it, they're pretty easy to convert to other controls.

John

[woolysock]

Stacked knobs = no problem. Just run everything wide open ;-)

[XUSMC1775x]

thank you everyone for the answers, very informative. ive played it before (i fell in love with it) and wanted to make sure there were no long term problems with stacked pots. but thank you all again, i will purchase this bass now.

[vin*tone]

I believe they changed it bc stacked pots interact with each other when wide open. You can fix this by adding a buffer resister between the 2 stacks.

[XUSMC1775x]

Originally Posted by vin*tone

I believe they changed it bc stacked pots interact with each other when wide open. You can fix this by adding a buffer resister between the 2 stacks.

thank you!

[SGD Lutherie]

The stacked pots version is a little darker sounding than the regular version, and the resistors used to isolate the controls reduces the output level slightly.

But it's not a huge difference.