wiring question

[John]

Hi fellas, I'm putting in new pots and humbucker pickup on a buddy's Mandobird. The layout shows the volume as a linear pot and the tone as a audio taper. Shouldn't that be reversed?

Thanks!

[jeff]

Depends on what you want. An audio volume pot will get quiet quicker, linear pot will give a more gradual drop in volume as you turn down. When you get to "5" on audio taper you're at 10%, linear you're at 50%.

I personally like linear vol pots, to me there is more fine tuning.
I like audio for tone.

[John]

I went ahead and wired up like I *thought* it should be. He'll test it out with new strings and I'll report back. 

I did lower the cap value on the tone pot to .0047, one of Jojo's posts gave me the idea "for more transparent tone". Whatever he doesn't like I'll change easy enough.

[G._Hoffman]

Hi fellas, I'm putting in new pots and humbucker pickup on a buddy's Mandobird. The layout shows the volume as a linear pot and the tone as a audio taper. Shouldn't that be reversed?

Thanks!

Yes, probably.


Gabriel

[HotBluePlates]

Depends on what you want. An audio volume pot will get quiet quicker, linear pot will give a more gradual drop in volume as you turn down. When you get to "5" on audio taper you're at 10%, linear you're at 50%.

You're right as far as resistance drop, but not for actual volume drop.

The audio, or log, taper drops the resistance logarithmically as you turn down. Yes, the resistance is 10% at 1/2 rotation (or 20% for a 20-percent taper, 30% for a 30-percent taper). But your ear hears logarithmically, so 10% sounds like "half-volume".

By comparision, a linear taper pot will seem to have no action or effect until it's turned almost all the way off. Then all the volume change happens in that last 10% from 1 to 0.

The layout shows the volume as a linear pot and the tone as a audio taper. Shouldn't that be reversed?

Measure what's there. If it shows half-resistance at half-rotation, it's linear. Replace the pots with what was originally there (even if "wrong") if your buddy likes it the way it is.

[John]

He didn't like the tone the way it was originally, so when I put in the humbucker pup with new pots and a 3-way switch, I used audio for volume, linear for tone. He will have played it all week at Common Ground, so he'll be able to tell me exactly how he wants it by now at my next lesson on Tuesday. Will report. And thanks for the replies.

Oh yeah, I do know I have to replace that .0047 on the tone. I got a .033 from Doug with my last order. Figure I'll put clip that in there and see how it sounds. I'm trying for something that doesn't turn to mud when he rolls it off, but still takes away the icepickiness of the highs. The humbucker sounds great in it. When you switch to single coil paralleled or series, they both sound very similar with very subtle differences. I'm wondering if the larger cap won't bring out a bit more difference between the 2.

I'm betting he plays the humbucker 99% of the time anyway.