250 or 500?

Do you want the old-school tone or the modern more top end tone?
Use 250 kohm if you want more of a traditional tone.
Use 500 kohm if you want more of an upper mid/low treble presence peak for a more modern tone.

Cricket: you have the ins and outs, and when the ins are in, they play inns for runs. When the ins are all out, they go out, and then the ins are out and the outs are in, and then they go out for runs until they are all out. They do this twice. The team with the most runs wins.

 

Yes, the traditional wiring for Fender-style basses is audio taper pots.

 

Maybe shoot Nordstrand a quick email and see what they recommend. They're usually pretty good at responding.

 

You'll barely notice any difference between 250 and 500. So, I wouldn't get hung-up on it. Since the split coil P pickup is a 'bucker and 250 K pots are used, why change the formula with your Duncan stacked p/u?

I have a couple of P Basses with "no load" tone pots. There is a by pass in the tone pot where the signal goes straight to the jack from the volume pot. Yes, it is a weeee bit brighter when I'm in by pass but only by about 3%.

Usually on a P bass, we roll off a bit of the high end anyway, don't we?

250K or 500K? Slim difference.

 

OOPS not Nordstrand. Seymour Duncan!

 

Haha that sounds like a great chat!
BUT... What did they suggest for your project? lol

 

Audio taper pots. Only option is linear for vol only, gives you a wider arc or rotation to really fine tune it, helpful in two pickup basses.

500K for tone will allow less highs bleeding to ground. Some guys even go 1M.

 

500K pots will give you more of the upper mid resonance peak, but....when you turn the volume down, it also gives you more high frequency rolloff due to interaction with the cable capacitance - 250K volume pots act more like a pure volume control, and less like a second tone control.

Audio taper pots are much more useful in tone controls than linear taper ones, but I find linear taper pots much more usable in volume controls - they give your very good control of volume over the top of the range (but less at the bottom). For a bass, the bottom of the volume control range (where an audio taper pot is better at controlling things)
is the area where you're inaudible in the mix, hence good control down there isn't all that helpful.

 

I recently upgraded the electronics in an old Squire p bass. Before I chose the values, I ran through a quick simulation of 250k vs 500k as the tone pot with either a 0.047 uF or a 0.1 uF capacitors. The most dynamic option was the 500k with the 0.1 uF. I really like the sound. I feel like the tone has a high dynamic range. Also, the audio taper was best in the simulation for tone circuits.

 

Just from physics anything that is more is also better.

 

Specifically, that would be the 5th law of thermodynamics, which is right behind the fourth law “less is acceptable”.

 

Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of science?

 

One of my thermo professors had a thick accent and used to talk about Newton's turd law.

 

Arthur, king of the britons...

when I was in grad school, my thermo professor had no accent, but he would ride on a revolving floor into class every day as if it was about to be an awesome class time. However, he would then proceed to disappoint. I ended up auditing the class, and that’s still the weakest portion of my physics education.

 

250 gives you a more even sweep, Where the 500 is more of a controled on/off switch.

 

Will never know!

 

I do like brightness these days (you can dial it down with tone control anyway), so I'd say 500K pots... But, pots are relatively cheap... if you solder well, just try a bunch of combos.

Or do what the Duncan guy recommended!