swapping pots and caps

[koula901]

Have read a lot of posts where people are changing out the pots and caps. What, exactly, does this do to a guitar? How does it improve the sound?

[kbp810]

Well, in most cases changing working pot's with new pot's of the same value will not really "improve" the sound, but perhaps the new pots might have a better taper to them making it easier to dial in desired volume and tone levels. Of course old pots can do funny things... scratchy sounds, drifting values, undesirable tapers, etc... in which case new pots would indeed make a world of difference.

 

Going from a 500k pot to say a 250k pot for the volume controls would be more along the lines of actually changing the sound; whereas the 250k's would sound warmer (less resistance = more high frequency attenuation)

 

The same essentially holds true for caps... changing one cap for another of the same value will likely yield little in the way of change... (except of course for that strange magical mojo that seems to come from PIO caps ). Otherwise, a higher cap value will negate more of the high frequencies, yielding in a warmer tone, where as a lower cap value will allow more high(er) frequencies to pass.

[H]

Swapping out pots and caps also makes you forget that you now have exactly the same sound as before but it is suddenly 'better' and you now have 'unbelievable tone'

 

I did actually notice a small tonal difference switching to 'vintage' or 'fifties' wiring but the big tone gains are to be had from pickup changes.

[koula901]

I should think, then, that lower cap values would be desirable in a 150 to brighten up the sound, somewhat. and maybe higher cap values would be better for a single coil guitar (i.e. strat/tele) to warm/fatten it up a bit. ??

[koula901]

. . . but the big tone gains are to be had from pickup changes.

 

that's an opinion I've read before. I've just been struck, lately, with the fact that Tully's MIJ Squire sounded so good, and it was made of plywood.