VV without T, direct to jack

[Sundogue]

I'm going to put in two volume controls (one for each pickup) in my newly wired passive bass. Currently, I have both pups wired to a single volume pot (250k). I want a touch more brightness so I bought two 500k pots (one volume control for each pup for versatility with blending my pups). I don't like a blend knob on a passive bass.

Per most diagrams I've seen, it goes from one outside lug of one volume pot to the outside lug of the other and then to the jack tip. Does that cause the first volume pot in line from the jack to have any affect on the other? I would think wiring each separately to the jack would eliminate any effect of one on the other, but I'm probably mistaken.

Can someone clarify it for me?

[line6man]

Two 500K pots in parallel is the same as one 250K pot, you won't make the bass any brighter that way.

[Sundogue]

Originally Posted by line6man

Two 500K pots in parallel is the same as one 250K pot, you won't make the bass any brighter that way.

So lets say I wanted it brighter and was willing to forego pickup blending, wiring both pickups to a single 500k pot would brighten it up then?

Why wouldn't wiring one pickup to one 500k pot and then to the jack and doing the same with the other pickup make it brighter? Each pickup is wired directly to the jack through it's own pot.

I must be missing something obviously.

Thanks.

[line6man]

Originally Posted by Sundogue

So lets say I wanted it brighter and was willing to forego pickup blending, wiring both pickups to a single 500k pot would brighten it up then?

Why wouldn't wiring one pickup to one 500k pot and then to the jack and doing the same with the other pickup make it brighter? Each pickup is wired directly to the jack through it's own pot.

I must be missing something obviously.

Thanks.

The pots are in parallel, so by the formula:
R_Total= (R₁ * R₂)/(R₁ + R₂)
Two 500K pots would place a 250K resistance from the signal to ground with both pots on "10".

If you wanted to make the bass brighter/hotter, you might try try two 1M pots, which comes out to 500K, which is brighter than the original 250K resistance to ground.

The difference is rather subtle though, btw.

[walterw]

Originally Posted by Sundogue

Why wouldn't wiring one pickup to one 500k pot and then to the jack and doing the same with the other pickup make it brighter? Each pickup is wired directly to the jack through it's own pot.

because the pots would still be connected to each other through that common connection at the jack. it's parallel either way.

if you want a 500k total load on the pickups, your options are to use 1M pots like line6man suggests, or a master 500k volume and a 3-way switch.

or, you could use my patented "no-load blend pot", where you get a 250k M/N blend/balance pot, wire it up as normal, but don't connect any of the ground terminals.

this will keep the blend pot from adding any load to the pickups, as well as smoothing out the panning between them.

[Sundogue]

I wired both pups to the same 500k Volume pot.

The 500k did brighten things up more as I had to turn my high end down a bit from where it was with the 250k.

Not significant, but enough to notice. I'm really diggin' the simplicity of nothing but a volume control. I could have gone straight to the jack even, but I like being able to turn up and down a bit right on my bass, or roll it off between songs. And with my bass totally passive now and the 500k pot, I have a very nice organic, smooth deep tone to my bass now.

Thanks for helping me understand things better.

[DerHoggz]

Originally Posted by walterw

because the pots would still be connected to each other through that common connection at the jack. it's parallel either way.

if you want a 500k total load on the pickups, your options are to use 1M pots like line6man suggests, or a master 500k volume and a 3-way switch.

or, you could use my patented "no-load blend pot", where you get a 250k M/N blend/balance pot, wire it up as normal, but don't connect any of the ground terminals.

this will keep the blend pot from adding any load to the pickups, as well as smoothing out the panning between them.

Do you mind elaborating on that pot layout a bit more?

[walterw]

sure; just get a normal "m/n blend/balance" pot, and wire it up as per normal blend pot wiring (available all over the net, especially here at TB), but leave off all the ground connections, including the one from one ground lug to the other.

this will leave you with two "ins", one from each pickup, and one "out", taken from the two "hot" lugs which get jumpered together as per the "normal" wiring.

by leaving off all the ground connections, the pot only adds series resistance to one pickup or the other, "dimming" its output without allowing any signal to get bled to ground like in a normal volume pot. therefore, it doesn't "load" the pickups, instead acting more like a pickup switch, which has no effect on tone.

[Sundogue]

Played my first gig with the new passive setup using only the volume control.

Thick, warm and organic sounding. No worry about the preamp batteries anymore either. Very happy with this setup.

[darkstorm]

Ive rewired a few guitars for two volume instead of master volume and tone. That alone does increase treble content just a tad for some reason. More notoceble with 500k pots. I do prefer the tone changes gettable via pup blending better then those gettable with single master volume and a tone control. To make up for the brighter sound I've found lowering the bridge pup pole peices a turn or so, & maybe lowering the whole pup a little, takes care of rebalancing the tone better to my taste. I especially like the tone tweaks from just lightly rolling off either the bridge or neck pup volume. It give two more basic voices to the instrument for a total of 5. With the two new ones and both pups on full as my everyday main voices.