5 Reasons To Change Your Pots

hey what's going on this is Dylan with Dylan talk stone and today we're gonna talk about why or if or when you should change the pots in your guitar if you're new to this channel do me a favor and hit the subscribe button we have like 500 videos all about guitar tone guitar tech myth-busting which is what we're doing today because you know you get on all these Facebook groups and you get on forums on the internet and stuff and you see people buy a brand new guitar and the very first thing they want to do is rip all their pots out and replace them with something else because they those small pots look cheap they're probably robbing tone and it's usually a weirdly a size based thing like those tiny caps those small pots like for some reason they think that stuff is robbing tone so let's just myth-busting umber one the bottom line is a pot is a pot is a pot is a pot when it comes to what it actually does now we're gonna get into a few different aspects of this that make this totally different as we go but all the pot is look at this diagram is there's a pin in the middle with a wiper on it the outside is a ring of carbon that is a particular resistance 250 K 500 K sound like that so if the wiper is all the way over here for example and it's on a volume pot which is what it is because this is a picture that's backwards so just bear with me but if the volume pot wiper is all the way over here it's very very close to ground and that means or all the way to ground and that means it's a short that means your volumes all the way down boom done if you go all the way the other way now you have that resistor in between there at 500 K or 250 K boom you have all your volume that is allowed through that pot and then that middle one is the output that goes to the output Jack the voltage divider versus variable resistor we could get into that that's a whole nother video so we'll get into that some other time if you want me to do that put it in the comments right now and let me know and we'll do the difference between why a volume pot works a certain way in a tone pot works a different way okay so we'll do that different a different video but that's the basics of it consumer based pot most consumer pots that you can buy you know borns CTS alpha all of them they're all going to have more or less the same that they do the same thing they are the same thing the pots in your $500 guitar are fine there's a couple of factors though that may not be one is the tolerance of the potentiometer might not be very good so let's say it's a 500k pot but then when you measure it it's only like 410 that could actually rob tone and we have a video about what why that is what the K of your pot makes a difference we'll put a link to that up here too if the pot has a bad tolerance and it doesn't measure what it's supposed to measure that could affect your tone sometimes that happens the other thing that could happen is what if you have a guitar you've all had these probably where you turn to get the guitar volume down it doesn't really do anything doesn't do anything doesn't do anything you get it down to like three and boom like shuts off like it there's no variableness to the volume or the tone right that is called the pot taper and that can be different from brand to brand and there are some custom ones and some of the cheaper guitars don't have very good ones for example so if your guitar has that problem and you turn it all the way that you want to do something by the taper this is what the taper is there are two different kinds one is basically a linear taper which does what you think it would do you turn the volume down to five it's 50% of the volume or 50% of the tone makes sense that's a leading your taper pot one that makes a little less sense and where you can kind of have some fun with the variableness of these from brand to brand is called the logarithmic pot or audio taper pot I personally use audio taper pots in everything because I like the way they feel and I like what they do so look at the curve on the audio taper pot what this does is it gives it sort of a ramp like it puts more of it in the middle and a less away from the edges so it makes it to where it doesn't do that thing where it like doesn't do anything doesn't do anything and then all of a sudden shuts off I like an audio taper pot personally on everything on the volume on the tone on everything and that's what I use and that's what we use on our custom build guitars I really really like them let's get into now that we understand technically what a pot does and some of the variables let's get into the actual construction of a pot and why you might want to change it so here is four different types of pots that we see in lots of guitars okay so we got the baby mini pot we've got the regular kind of pot we got another pot that's got a hole in it see that one with the hole in it and then we got this other one with this other conglomeration of stuff on the bottom so let's work through these the mini pot is the one that we see in a lot of less expensive guitars but that doesn't mean it's cheap that doesn't mean it doesn't work that pot right there the very one in that picture is actually going in a custom wiring harness for a very expensive guitar I'm actually building it today it's a quality pot it's fine there's nothing wrong with it the only thing that it's it's because of a size constraint it's got to go in a tiny spot that's why I'm using it the only reason I would use a bigger one than a smaller one has nothing to do with tone nothing to do with quality but it changes the ratio and how easy it is to adjust it can you kind of see the logic in that basically like if it's a little tiny pot and you try to move it you move it too much and you didn't mean to move it that much in a bigger pot because of more or less gear ratios it has to do with the circumference of the pot it's easier to adjust it where you want it so if you want to go from seven to seven and a half it's just easier to do that it's not as easy to do that now you can put a big knob on it and change the ratio of with a big knob but a lot of people don't do that don't have the space so for that reason I like going with a bigger pot it doesn't matter what we should say before we talk about anything else is if you have a guitar and if do you like how it sounds don't change anything don't change anything for the sake of changing stuff so just play the guitar right so make sure that it's if it has a problem if it's giving you a problem if it's doing something that you don't want it to do put it in the comments and discuss it with your peers but at the same time don't get talked into doing something just to do something right okay that rant over let's go on to the next physical pot so we talked about the little one we talked about the big one now we've got the other one see what the hole in it that if we go back to our drawing of what an actual pot is inside there's that racetrack of carbon that goes around the outside around the outside around the outside sorry hopefully I don't get copyright struck Eminem so a this is basically called a no-load pot and what that means is it's normal but then right as it gets to ten that little detent that little hole in the bottom makes it like click to ten and there's no resistor connected right there so you can use that on a tone pot sometimes to have it like wide open like pretend the pots not even in there we have another video about does a pot make a difference when it's all the way on ten and it actually it does we have we do this like side-by-side comparison and so to take it completely out of the circuit pretending you don't have a tone pot at all that's what that does it like clicks over to ten cuts off the end right there there's no resistance boom it's like you don't have a pot it's like having a switch at the end of your tone pot don't use it as a volume pot because if you do that then your guitar will cut out at ten and you don't want that and you don't want to accidentally do that so that's for a very specific purpose we have a couple of videos about that I'll link those in the pin comment below so that you can find more information on lote no-load pots okay the last one for now many of you probably already know that this is called a push-pull pot but for those that don't know see that stuff all on the bottom that is a dual pol dual throw switch which means that you can use that for fun stuff like parallel series switching for coil splitting for coil tapping for all kinds of fun stuff that you can do with the other wiring in your guitar it doesn't have anything to do actually with what's going on in the pot it's it's just an outside switch but it makes it to where it to do a function so you have the pot down here at the bottom and then here you have this switch that makes it to where you can like do other functions that's all it is all these things all this can Fujin if you like your guitar and you see no reason to change it don't change it don't change stuff just because somebody told you you think you should or make you think you should just buy something you saw in a forum now obviously experimenting is super fun but I think a lot of people kind of get pushed in two directions and down rabbit holes for no reason whatsoever so just keep this in mind so little pot big pot no load tone pot and push-pull now they do have push push - a little suggestion on that push push thing get a really good one if you're gonna get a push push or a push pull pot spend the most money that you can afford to get the best one because there is a mechanism in there that can break so you just want to make sure that you get a really good quality one and do your research on that I like borns that's my favorite I like borns pots in general because I like the way they feel they're not too stiff I like the taper I like the quality some people like CTS some people like alpha there's a bunch of different brands I'm a born Skye just I always it's just my favorite and that's what we use in our custom guitars if you go to Dylan talk stone you'll see we have like these pre-made wiring harnesses for strats and Telly's and stuff like that Mustangs all that kind of stuff and we use borns pots predominantly unless somebody wants something else just because I like the quality of them and I like really how smoothly they feel they're super super smooth if you have any questions about any of this stuff man put it in the comments this stuff is super fun to talk about if this brings up a question for you that you did not know Ari like wait a minute what about put it in the comments maybe we'll make a video about it super cool thanks for hanging out make sure you hit the subscribe button and we'll see you soon

Channel: DylanTalksTone

Views: 134,231

Keywords: pots, should i replace my pots, 500k pots vs 250k pots, 500k pots with single coil pickups, audio taper vs linear taper pots, guitar pots linear or audio taper, guitar pots explained, guitar pots comparison, guitar pots 250k vs 500k, guitar pots linear or logarithmic, potentiometer wiring, emerson pots, how to wire your guitar, bourns pots, bourns vs cts pots, cts vs bourns pots, alpha pots vs cts, what pots should i buy, 5 Reasons To Change Your Pots

Id: kO9dPHmb3oc

Length: 10min 46sec (646 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 21 2019