250k Vs 500k Pots For Humbuckers

It s a rule for a reason.

250k vs 500k pots for humbuckers. Halfway through a 500k pot should have a resistance of around 250k. First i wanted to make something really clear up front. We use the 500k pots for the humbuckers because they are warm and dark sounding so we want to preserve as much high end as we can. Typically it s 250k for single coils and 500k for humbuckers.

Therefore a 500k pot will result in a brighter tone than a 250k pot used on the same pickup. This type of pot will cause the volume to seem to change the most right when it is almost all the way up. Mixing humbuchers and single coil pickups. But the why remains a cloudy subject.

Yes it is typical you will find 250k pots used on nearly all traditional strat 3 single coil sss configurations and 500k pots used on nearly all 2 humbucker hh configurations. Just had to get this one off my chest. There s plenty of discussion on the web about the correct value pots to use for single coil pickups or humbuckers but very little information about mixing. 250k control pots are the usual choice for single coil pickups.

500k control pots are the usual choice for humbuckers. 1meg ohm is 1 000k or 1 million ohms. It is also known that a 500k pot will give you more highs than a 250k pot. I just tried a bunch of humbuckers with my 250k strat trying to find one that didn t sound muddy.

These k numbers are the resistance ratings kohms. Gibson has also been known to use around 300k for their humbucking equipped guitars volume pots. There is no perfect solution to this combination pickup scheme but there are a number of very good ones. Pots generally speaking the higher the value the brighter the tone.

So let s get to the bottom of it. Whilst there are many variables to consider the traditional volume pot values appear to be the best choice in most sc. A 500k volume pot offers twice the resistance to the current flowing from the pickup to the output jack versus a 250k pot when turned up to maximum. Mixing humbuckers and single coil pickups should i use 500k ohm or 250k ohm pots.

Generally speaking to control volume humbuckers should be paired to 500k pots while single coil pickups should be paired with 250k pots. While there are 1 meg potsout there the vast majority of electrics use either 250 or 500. We use 250k pots for the single coils because these pickups are often very bright. Finally threw in a 500k volume and it s my favorite humbucker tone right now.

An audio taper travels from zero to max in a logarithmic way similar to the way the human ear works. Allowing some of the highs to slip away can reduce the shrill and warm up the high notes. There are even some wiring schematics around that make a 500k pot a 250k pot depending on the position of your five way blade so you have a 250k pot with your singlecoils and a 500k pot with your humbucker. Why does the value of the pot matter.

Tone cap s generally speaking the higher the value the more bass you have at zero. A linear taper goes from zero to max in a linear fashion. When to use 500k pots.