Switching pots from 500 to 1megaohme

[Ostia Man]

I have 1meg pot on both my rg7620, in the vol and tone controls. It really open up the sound, is like going from an "ooooooh" sound to an "aaaaaah" sound. You can hear the atack of the pick on the neck pup(blaze) even at extra high gain(really hard to get whith 500k), the bridge pup(evo on one, blaze on the other) is sharper on the attack, more crunchy. I dont think I'll ever go back to 500k pot, at least on my 7strings. On my strats 250k, I would never use 1000k on starts.

 

[JBroll]

i remember hearing that a larger ohm pot gave you more range on the knob as well, like switching between a 12:1 tuner and a 18:1 tuner. Any truth to this?

The explanations above don't really do it for me.

Let's put it like this: everything a 500K pot can do, a 1M pot can do. Not everything the 1M pot can do is possible with a 500K pot.

Jeff

 

[dpm]

I'd just simply say they sound different

 

[Seedawakener]

So this means that if I want my all mahogany Hellraiser to sound a bit brighter and have clearer notes on the low end, I should get this mod?

 

[Edroz]

So this means that if I want my all mahogany Hellraiser to sound a bit brighter and have clearer notes on the low end, I should get this mod?

but the hellraiser has EMGs which require 25k pots.

 

[ibznorange]

maybe a 50 k pot, or 100k, would be the same as a 250-500-1000?

 

[dpm]

EMG recommend 50k bass systems with a blend pot. It's not a direct interaction with the pickup in an active system so the difference is unlikely to be as dramatic. Running them at 18v might be worth a try.

 

[sanchezero]

tone pots more commonly have a linear taper, while vol pots typically use log tapers

on a related note, let's say i needed to control my distortion with my volume knob (1 channel amp or some such) would it make sense to switch to a linear volume pot? the log pots have such a small 'working' range that i find it kinda difficult to deal with sometimes.

thanks

 

[JBroll]

Small 'working' range? They're designed to raise gain in a fashion related to the way the human ear perceives volume increase, I don't see how that would help. Any volume knob or pedal you see out on the market is going to use a log taper. If you only need one setting, the best option would be to roll your volume off to the right level, measure its resistance, and then have a little switch in the guitar or in a stompbox (instant channel switch, sort of!) that sets up a resistor of the same volume to ground so you have an instant transition to that level.

The linear taper will feel even more bizarre, I'd wager, so I wouldn't do that.

Jeff

 

[sanchezero]

now thats an interesting idea; thanks.

i'm gonna trust you on this, partly because i'm lazy and partly because i don't have a badass single channel. i am looking into the thd flexi and the vht deliverance tho, so maybe in the future this'll be more of an issue.

thanks again

 

[dpm]

Dimarzio pots have a custom taper which works well for rolling off gain.