I've seen a few comments on forums recently about using the Fender "No Load" tone pot as a volume pot to get the same affect of unloading the pickups at full volume.

Unfortunately, it won't work as a volume pot.

The no load pot works by breaking the conductive element at the "end" of the pot - fully clockwise. This means several things: If you measure across the outside terminals of the pot like you would a normal pot to check its value, it will read open. The resistance from the counter clockwise (CCW) terminal to the wiper will increase as you turn the pot CW up to its 250K value right near the CW end. At the CW end, the wiper drops into a detent position & actually connects to the CW terminal. But, at this point, it "disconnects" from the CCW terminal.





By disconnecting the wiper, that effectively removes the tone control from the circuit & remove any loading on the pickup(s).

Now, if you try to take that same pot and replace a volume pot with it, you end up with this:





What you'll get is a volume control that is at maximum volume at 0 - full CCW - and gets quieter as you turn it "up" until it gets to the end & disconnects (and connects to the CW terminal which is tied to ground) giving you no output at all. I don't think that's what anyone's looking for.

Welcome to the forum phostenix if you ground the output youll certainly get no load on your ears thats true.

But, you'll get no hum. So that's nice....

Hmmmm do peeps use em to deliberatly ground the o/p for that very reason ?

Quite a few players turn the volume down between songs (Gary Moore) to name but 1 sometimes when he isnt on LP duty.

I was joking about getting no hum. If you wired up your volume pot like this, the volume pot would work backwards - 0 being the loudest & 10 being no output. I'm not sure how it would sound, either, since you're adding resistance in series with the output of the pickups as you turn it up (down). It would be a mess all the way around, IMO.

OK, it's been pointed out to me how you CAN use the no load tone pot as a no load volume pot. It's setup more like a tone control, but without the cap. The wiper goes straight to ground.

Since I'm making some changes to my Strat today, I decided to try the Fender no load pot as a volume control setup this way:






It does work, but it does roll off the highs as you turn it down. It's not as bad as I thought it might be, but it's definitely noticeable. The no load position isn't a big volume jump, but it is brighter/edgier. I would guess that if you put an inductor between the wiper & ground so that it attenuated low frequenices more than high, you could find a balance & make it work. Like this:






BTW, this test was done with a '94 Strat Plus with Lace sensors into a Boss GT Pro (1 M ohm input impedance). YMMV