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Help understanding Pots

T

Thelowendfunk

Dec 22, 2011
37
0
UK
#1
Hi,
I posted the other day about my broke fleabass and this relates to that but I wanted to make a new thread because I thought more people would actually look at this purely because pots are generic and most should have an understanding of them.


Okay, so, I need to replace the pots in my fleabass streetbass and I'm just trying to get to grips with them overall! I know I have a tone control and a volume control and I kind of understand liner and logarithmic in terms of volume pots and have decided to go with liner. What really confuses me is the tone pot, From what I understand there is 1 meg, 250K, and 500K. I've been using [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] to look at pots and on the right hand side they have a little 'rule of thumb' which is 1 meg = very bright sounding, 500K = bright sounding and 250k is vintage/warm sounding. I was just going to stick with the 250K for now but could someone please just check that site out and tell me which pots for volume and tone would be ideal for what i need? I just want a working fleabass XD

Any help and explanations would be great thanks!
 
#2
Don't use 1M pots for tone controls, they will act as switches, since the capacitor will essentially be removed from the circuit for most of the resistance range.

1M volumes are preferable when you have many pots in parallel, since the total resistance decreases.

What shaft length did you want, and do you want split or solid?
 
#3
Well i dont really know what the length i need, the length of shaft that comes off the actual body is roughly 1cm so I would of thought either short or medium length. It also has a groove at the top of the shaft and ridges on the side so I'm guessing its a split shaft. Apart from that I still have no clue about what exact pots to get for volume and tone.
 
#4
Thelowendfunk said:
Well i dont really know what the length i need, the length of shaft that comes off the actual body is roughly 1cm so I would of thought either short or medium length. It also has a groove at the top of the shaft and ridges on the side so I'm guessing its a split shaft. Apart from that I still have no clue about what exact pots to get for volume and tone.
Click to expand...
Get long shaft pots and use an extra washer and nut on the control cavity side to set the height.
 
#6
Thelowendfunk said:
Okay, any idea on the tone pots? I have no idea! Thinking of just getting an EMG 35DC, it seems much easier!
Click to expand...

That's an active pickup, so the output impedance is too low to work well with 250k and 500k pots.
You'll want 25k or 50k, or maybe 100k. Also, use a higher capacitance for the tone control than you would with passive pickups, unless you like the higher frequency cutoff.
 
#7
If you do get the EMG, it will come with all its own wiring, including pots, so all that stuff would be taken care of.
 
#8
I know they are active but the come with their own pots, and someome actually posted saying it was very easy as there is enough space to tape the battery inside the little cavity. Could you suggest two pots from that site I could use for now, I just want a standard volume one and a basic tone one which will do the job.
 

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