I was looking at the parts list for my Deluxe Player's Stratocaster, and I noticed that it uses a 1 meg pot for the volume and 2 500K pots for the tone. I was under the impression that Strats used 250K pots. Could someone please explain this to me?

Also, I was wondering what value of capacitator to use on the Strat, since I was looking to replace mine, since I heard it improves tone, and wire the bridge and neck to one tone control, which I heard also requires another capacitator. I saw a .022 on the parts list, but I saw somewhere that a .047 is the standard on a Strat. Can someone please help me?

As you can all tell, I know nothing about electronics. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Standard vintage style strats use 250K pots. Other designs may use different values.

I have 41 years experience as a guitar player and 31 years experience as an electrical engineer. In my opinion, it is silly to start changing caps and pots just because some guy in the internet says it improves tone. To do the mod correctly, you'd also have to go to a surgeon and get your ears replaced with the internet guy's ears.

Changing a cap in your guitar may change the tone, but whether it improves tone is strictly a matter of your taste vs. somebody else's. If you like your guitar, leave it alone. I have never felt the need to change any of the electronics in any of my guitars or amps. There's a lot of guys on the internet that know which end of a soldering iron to grab but not much else.

Capacitors act like filters or gates that allow only high frequencies to pass through them, thus clipping the treble and removing them from the tone. The higher the value or rating the more treble will be clipped. Since Strats tend to have more top end they usually have higher value caps to roll off the more highs. Typically they are wired with .05 mF caps instead of .02mF caps that come with Les Pauls or similar guitars. This is not a hard or fast rule.

Pots sort of work in the opposite direction in terms of numeric value. The higher the value the brighter the tone response. Since humbuckers are warmer in tone by nature of their design, they are typically wired with 500k pots and d sometimes 1meg pots, whereas Strats and single coil pickups are wired with 250k pots. Again this is not a hard and fast rule.

In the end, it comes down to the tone that you’re looking for.

Play On!

Now that the technicalities have been explained to you, let me say this:

Too many people too often get WAY too hung up on some sort of uniform specifications compendium to where if they don't have it in and/or on their guitar, then the guitar will always be viewed as some kind of illegitimate stepchild and intrinsically, a POS. Again, like what has been said many times before and earlier here too, this is more of that (what I call), "Infallible Web Dogma" BS. Sure, there are more popular formulas than others but in each and every player's personal situation, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

FWIW, my Deluxe Player's came OEM with a 250K for the volume and 500K for each of the tone pots. I didn't even bother to look at the capacitor's value. I changed the pickups because I had a special project in mind but I felt no need to change the pots or the, "mystery mF cap" as I figured I'd give them a chance first; besides, it's less work for me. I'm happy with the results and isn't that what really counts to whoever owns the instrument?

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