newbie pot question

[xparis001]

Hi gang,

I'm not exactly a newbie to electronics etc, but the mysteries of passive electronics escape me sometimes.

so ok, here's my question - i have a jazz bass, a geddy lee. whenever i tweak the front or rear pickup, i get an interesting "mwah" of tone ranges between 10 and 7, then not much else between 7-0. my thought was, couldnt i measure the resistence at 7, and then get a pot of that value, which will give me a better control of the useable range?

I realize that the pickup volume would never be zero, and I'm ok with that, but what else am i missing?

 

[mmbongo]

Covered this yesterday!
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f38/better-tone-w-pus-90%-jbass-1014160/

 

[fritzk9]

Could also replace your pot with one of those 10 turn pots to hone in on the sound.

 

[iiipopes]

You may have audio taper pots. The way to find out is to take a pot out, measure its value on the outside lugs, and put the wiper in the middle of its sweep. You should have different measurements from the wiper to either lug. If you do have audio taper pots, then you might get what you are looking for with linear taper pots, which, as the name implies, will measure equally to either outside lug from the wiper lug when in the middle of the sweep. It effectively expands that "10 down to 7" range you are looking for.

 

[uOpt]

OP, can you clarify whether the sound you don't like appears when mixing both pickups or is just turning one down already bad (with the other being off)?

 

[walterw]

You may have audio taper pots...you might get what you are looking for with linear taper pots, which, as the name implies, will measure equally to either outside lug from the wiper lug when in the middle of the sweep. It effectively expands that "10 down to 7" range you are looking for.

you do have audio taper volumes, and linear volumes will indeed give you more range in the critical zone.

and yes, it's a classic old school jazz bass trick to run all three knobs off of "10", taking them out of the jumpy part of their sweeps; you lose output and treble when you do this, but that's what amp knobs are for, right?