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Post subject: Advice on changing pots, caps
Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 2:26 pm
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I recently installed some vintage noiseless pickups (MIM). The middle/bridge positon sounds pretty good but when I run bridge only its entirely too bright for my taste. If I understand correctly the 1meg pots have something to do with this. Can anyone suggest different pot and capacitor values to take out some of the bite?


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Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 2:41 pm
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Before you go performing solder surgery on your axe, try lowering your bridge pup some. Sometimes after installing new pups you'll find that they don't work best at the same height as the last pups. Mess with the height adjustment, it won't hurt a thing and you may avoid surgery.

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Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 3:03 pm
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Very good point, they are however down quite a bit so i don't know how much more I can go without loosing too much volume, but I will give it a shot.

I was doing some reading and it said the lower valuepots will make the guitar less bright. So does that mean change the tone and volume pots? so if I got 1meg tone pots and a 500k volume if I lower it to 500k tone and 250k volume (probably the stock setup) it should help me out right? Anyone know if I should change the capacitor values ? or what that will do?

Thanks


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Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 3:24 pm
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If it were mine I would go with CTS 250k audio taper pots for both tone and volume pots and use .022 caps.

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Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 5:37 pm
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CAFeathers wrote:
If it were mine I would go with CTS 250k audio taper pots for both tone and volume pots and use .022 caps.


Did you do this with the vintage noiseless pups ?

It seems to me that that the supplied pots and caps with the noiseless pickups may be a little drastic. What you suggest is basically a stock setup, is there a reason Fender sends the the 1 meg pots ? Kinda why I was considering going half way with the 500k tone pots.

Also it seems there is a huge difference from the bridge to the neck pickup anyway to even these out a bit?

I did try lowering the bridge pickup more and it didn't make much difference in tone it just took the output down on the bridge pup.


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Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 5:45 pm
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tonefight wrote:
CAFeathers wrote:
If it were mine I would go with CTS 250k audio taper pots for both tone and volume pots and use .022 caps.


Did you do this with the vintage noiseless pups ?

It seems to me that that the supplied pots and caps with the noiseless pickups may be a little drastic. What you suggest is basically a stock setup, is there a reason Fender sends the the 1 meg pots ? Kinda why I was considering going half way with the 500k tone pots.

Also it seems there is a huge difference from the bridge to the neck pickup anyway to even these out a bit?

I did try lowering the bridge pickup more and it didn't make much difference in tone it just took the output down on the bridge pup.


Yes, I did this for a friend of mine. Both of us love the way it sounds.

I have no idea why Fender does what they do.

What type of difference are you talking about between the bridge and neck?

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Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 6:34 pm
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First off thanks CAFeathers you're giving me the info I was looking for.

CAFeathers wrote:
What type of difference are you talking about between the bridge and neck?




I meant to say bridge and middle actually. To get right down to it a little more specific, its from position 4 to position 5 is like jumping off a cliff. I'm almost afraid to go to position 5 the treble is so strong. The overall tone throughout the pups is pretty trebly but the bridge is real strong.

This is however my first S/S/S strat. My first Strat was a Fat Strat and all my previous guitars had humbuckers so I am breaking into new and unfamiliar ground here.


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Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 6:37 pm
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tonefight wrote:
First off thanks CAFeathers you're giving me the info I was looking for.

CAFeathers wrote:
What type of difference are you talking about between the bridge and neck?




I meant to say bridge and middle actually. To get right down to it a little more specific, its from position 4 to position 5 is like jumping off a cliff. I'm almost afraid to go to position 5 the treble is so strong. The overall tone throughout the pups is pretty trebly but the bridge is real strong.

This is however my first S/S/S strat. My first Strat was a Fat Strat and all my previous guitars had humbuckers so I am breaking into new and unfamiliar ground here.


If you go with the pots and caps I recommended that difference should go away. I did not notice that big of a difference in my friends guitar.

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Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 8:58 am
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I'm not sure what is standard with these pickups, but do you know if the bridge is even using the tone control? It may be wide open (unloaded), so giving it the same load as the others might help. I actually wired mine with an independent tone control for the bridge position only and that serves me well.


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Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 2:27 pm
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The tone does effect the bridge pickup currently but it also does the middle if I remember correctly ( I'll check it out later )

A seperate tone for the bridge may work well, maybe leave a 1 meg on the mid and neck pups since they sound good now and wire a 250 to the bridge ? You might be onto something.

I'm gonna try straight 250k pots first as suggested by CaFeathers, exept I think i'm gonna try a master tone ( got a diagram for that ) I usually don't use the tone knobs I just wanna get the values right to cure this treble problem. If that don't work out I'll try and figure out how to add a seperate to the bridge.
Thanks
Tony


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