Wrong pots???

[Tewest86]

I have a bass with Aguilar pre and Bart pickups. The gain is insanely low. I mean super low. It's wired v v with no blend. I checked the pots and they are 10K which I think is the reason for the low output. I had the exact same setup before and the output was hot. But it had the correct pots. Would changing to 250K fix this? Everything I read says yes.

[BFunk]

You should use the pot values recommended by Aguilar.

[Tewest86]

Well, Aguilar says use the volume and blend pots recommended by the pickup manufacturer.

[Tewest86]

After some research, I think I found my answer. If using Bartolini pickups (passive pickups) use at least a 250k volume pot if you wire it vol-vol. If you wire it vol-blend, you have to use at least a 250k blend pot but you can then use a 25K volume. Basically, what ever you have the pickups leads hooked to should be at least 250k.

[line6man]

First off, the gain should be low, as the Aguilar preamps are not meant to boost it. Don't confuse gain with output level.

In any case, you can use whatever pot values you like for the signal path, but the EQ pots need to be the value that Aguilar specifies for optimal performance of the equalizers. With that being said, the values used for the pots which control the signal will usually be quite different than the values used for the EQ pots. If you are using 10k pots with a high impedance signal, that explains your volume loss. You will want to switch those out for 250k or 500k pots, depending on your personal preference. 500k will be brighter and slightly hotter than 250k.