What K Pots does fender use?

every fender I have owned has had 250 k pots in it.

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+1 on the 250k pots

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blues - its a religion...

500K on squiers to support weak stock pickups .

Squier, weak pickups?

Not so. Ceramic magnets have significantly more pull than any AlNiCo grade. In truth ceramics are often overwound to compensate for the super strong magnets. More likely increased resistance to offer a bit more clarity on a full sounding pickup.

Anyway, Fender use all sorts of value pots on their guitars. From 50K to 1meg that I've seen. What does the Gilmour use? EMG humbuckers usually use 25K pots. Do the SA pickups use the same?

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Yeah but generally squier stock pups are weaker than fender "fender" pups like am standard & deluxe series

No they sound different, some would say worse. But the output is higher.

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1 MEGs for tone and volume pots on my CS Bass VI.

So help me understand this please. I don't really want any opinions on why my Squier Musicmaster bass is worse than a Fender or anything like that, I'm just trying to understand the values on the pots.

So I have a '78 Fender Musicmaster bass with a Seymour Duncan 1/4 pounder pickup and '97 Squier Musicmaster with the Vista Tone pickup. They both sound good and the output through my amp is approx the same. However, my 3rd bass is an SX Short Scale Jazz bass, before the infamous and ugly URSA headstock change too. This is also a great playing bass but the output is really low compared to the two MM's.

The pickups were already replaced with some Dimarzio's but here's my question, would changing out the pots help with the output, and if so what values would I be looking for? I'm assuming I'd need to look at the Fender and Squier and see what those are and get something comparable?

Maybe a dumb question but thought some of you vets on the tech side might have some helpful info, thanx!

Ok quick rule of thumb, capacitance aids bass and cuts treble, resistance aids treble and in a lot of ways cuts bass.

So what sound are you going for? That's the key question.


As an aside I've always found setup aids output a hell of a lot. If a guitar is set up for slinky light fingered playing you wont belt the strings with much force.
So perhaps raising the action and afterwards the pickups a little. Then changing play style on that guitar may aid a little bit.

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I'm looking to keep that same punchy/middle of the road bass sound that I get from my Musicmasters, bass not quite as "bottomy" as a P-bass and not as funky/trebly. I'm not a slapper and the action is pretty equal between the three. I can still raise the pups on the SX a bit too, just wondering if the POTS would assist in the output level but sounds as if it's more a sound adjustment rather then overall level output, right?

Fender USA/MIM passive basses usually have 250K CTS brand pots and a 0.05 (or sometimes 0.047 which is essentially the same value) tone capacitor. Besides value, the capacitor type selection makes a difference too. I'm not going to tell you what type cap to use. I'm going to tell you what each popular passive bass tone cap type can do.

Ceramic Disc-Cheap, but reliable, stable and popular. Adds a bit of crunch when the tone control is cranked to full treble. Some find this crunch pleasing. Good choice for hard rock, punk, hard country, southern rock. Used during the Pre-CBS and CBS eras in passive basses and recently FMIC era Fender basses sport them after using Poly for decades. Fender even brought back the 0.05 marked ceramic disc cap that had been obsolete for decades and so far as I know is the only source for recent production ceramic caps labeled 0.05 as they had been obsolete since about 1975! However a 0.047 ceramic cap is pretty much the same thing. Due to the tolerance factor a cap labeled 0.05 will typically read somewhere from 0.04 to 0.06 so the .003 difference on the stated value isn't really that big a deal.

Poly-Reasonably priced but more expensive than a Ceramic Disc. There are various grades of Poly caps. The Sprague Orange-Drop is a better, slightly warmer sounding cap than a green chicklet type but both have fairly similar characteristics. The Sprague Poly Orange-Drop is probably the most popular cap mod from stock and is a decent all around middle of the road choice. There is some edge, but it isn't as edgy as a ceramic disc.

Mylar-About the same price as Poly but far less distortion particularly in the Sprague Mylar Orange-Drop variety. Harder to find but available if you look for them and still being manufactured. A better choice for any SMOOTH type of music. Hardly any distortion at any tone setting.

Sprague Paper-In-Oil Vitamin-Q Series and Vitamin-Q type clones-Price varies depending on whether you get a real Sprague Vitamin-Q which can cost $20 to $30 or buy a Russian clone for $5. The smoothest possible sound with no discernible distortion whatsoever. The difference between the Sprague Mylar and the Paper-In-Oil is difficult to hear unless you have a really clean high-fidelity preamp, power amp and high-fidelity cab. In a typical combo you won't be able to tell the difference. Some people claim there is no difference between the performance of the Russian and genuine Sprague vintage caps and others actually like the Russian ones better. I never used a Russian one myself so I can't give an opinion on that. The reason to use a real Sprague Vitamin-Q or a Russian clone is that they are sealed in glass which is then sealed inside a metal (usually aluminum) casing. They will not leak. They were designed to military spec for use on ICBM's to sit in silos for decades and remain stable plus are rugged enough to endure what a missile guidance system has to endure, which is pretty rough stuff. I would NOT suggest using any type Paper-In-Oil cap in a guitar other than a Vitamin-Q or one of the Russian Vitamin-Q clones due the fact that NON-Vitamin-Q types are not stable over decades and may eventually leak. This oily fluid is carcinogenic as it contains PCB's! Even though they are sealed in glass and then sealed in metal, I still wash my hands immediately after handling a Vitamin-Q type cap.

No matter what type cap you select, it is critical to put a candidate on a meter to make sure it is close to the stated value. Sometimes they are way off the stated value. Get one as close to 0.05 as you can but between 0.045 and 0.055 should work fine.

He's talking about passive Jazz Bass pickups. So 250K. He probably has 500K in the SX Jazz. He needs to look and see how they are marked. If they are marked 500K I'd put 250K ones in there.

BrotherDave

Thank you for a very informative lesson on capacitors.
I knew there was more to it than more farrads increase bass. You can't really increase bass or treble on a passive instrument, just change how much comes in when.

That one is copied and stored mate. Thanks once again.

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