bremen

I have two basses that I use on a regular basis and use different strings on each - D'addario Chromes on my Precision and GHS Pressurewounds on my fretless. Seems unfair just to vote for one.

[quote name='Johnston' timestamp='1344545487' post='1766358'] But I'm not talking an audio signal. It's an electrical signal. [/quote] You've completely lost me now. Electrical current is an analogue of an electrical signal. But what point are you making? [quote] If two bits of wire have different resistances then they will have an affect on the electrical signal. [/quote] but not on the audio signal I suppose. Ohm's law applies whether the electricity is being used to transfer audio information or drive a train. [quote] As I said I have discussed electrical components with two men. One of which at least is smarter than the majority of posters on this site and gave me a right ear ful for using standard automotive cable. When these two guys who I know have knowledge will not use cheap components because they cannot guarantee their effects on an electrical circuit. I will go with their wisdom. One of which has been involved in testing wire and components on electrical systems of engines. The other who has access to a very wide range of testing apparatus including stuff he is one of only a handful in the UK qualified to use. I will take their word over it [/quote] Oh right, that's us told then. I'm out, got this law degree to study for...

[quote name='Johnston' timestamp='1344540823' post='1766287'] Or another thing. How come a guitar sounds different if there is no tone pot than when the tone pot is full open? Surely if it's full open and no resistance it shouldn't affect things? [/quote] When the tone pot is fully open it's still 250k (or whatever) in series with the cap, so still has some load on it. Some tone pots have a push-pull to completely remove them from the circuit.

[quote name='Johnston' timestamp='1344528904' post='1766074'] No one has said you have to use a certain pot value. But if the pot value alters the sound of the instrument then swapping pots like for like when one is closer to the intended value will make a difference. [/quote] That's a bit of a leap. As I stated earlier, pickups aren't at their best into a specific value of pot. The pot value is a compromise, and a very rough one, of how much load the pickup can take (this depends on the impedance of the pickup; humbuckers are higher than single coil) and how much we care about the effect of the cable when not turned full up. The guitar designer doesn't know how capacitative the cable is, so it's always going to be a very rough guess at the best value. And just to confuse things further, using a wireless transmitter instead of a cable minimises the loading effect so the 'best' value pot would be the highest. [quote] so swapping by pot that reads 634k for one that reads 493K will likely give an audible change. Even though they both say 500K [/quote] Almost certainly wouldn't, no. As I stated earlier the loading effect of the pot on the pickup is less significant than the loading effect of the cable on the pot. [quote] Ergo swapping cheap pots out for better ones can alter the tone. [/quote] As the statement you deduced that from isn't true, ergo neither is that one. [quote] Add in cheap sh*t wire with a higher resistance than good quality stuff and no one say that all wire has the same resistance because it hasn't. [/quote] Two things here. 1. No, not all wire has the same resistance. But as I asserted earlier, neither you nor I (and, you'll remember, I work in electronics and have a lab full of test gear) could measure the difference between 10cm of the cheapest hook-up wire from a Chinese bike light, an equivalent length of solid silver oxygen free organically grown harvested-by-unicorns snakeoil wire or the lump of twin-and-earth you have left over from your cooker installation. All will be comfortably less than a hundredth of an ohm. 2. For a series wire to have any audible attenuation effect on an audio signal, it would have to be at least a tenth of the load it's driving. In the worst-case, let's assume a 250k pot. So for the wire to audibly drop the level, it'd have to be 25000 ohms, not 0.01 ohms. I'd say that was a fair safety margin [quote]Oh and I have too much of a conscience for law [/quote] Imagine the time you could free up to study it though, if you were even 3dB less tenacious in Basschat debates If you're interested in the figures I've used above, and I know you are, may I recomment The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill, and/or an online electronics tutorial? Potential dividers, impedance and capacitive/inductive reactance (the stuff you need to understand the interactions of the components in a guitar) are covered pretty early in a course and aren't difficult to grasp without maths if the tutor is any good.

[quote name='Johnston' timestamp='1344527362' post='1766017'] Well is 25% ridiculously out of spec? [/quote] No. [quote] The new ones, no idea either just they are full size and within 10k of the stated rating. The old ones 100 and something K . But would you not say a cheaper pot is more likely to be at the higher end of the tolerance than a better spec one. [/quote] Not necessarily. [quote] And again all 3 pots on a bass showing the exact same symptoms? [/quote] Why not, all the same age, all exposed to the same amount of smoke and sweat [quote] I'll go out later and pull the minis that came out of a stag and see what they say. [/quote]

[quote name='Johnston' timestamp='1344524332' post='1765947'] So the resistance of a pot makes a difference. and if a cheap pot can be 25% out of it's stated resistance then swapping for a better one closer to the actual rating will make a difference. [/quote] You sure do know how to twist a man's words. Are you a lawyer? Most pots, and I don't know what your new pots are, are 20% tolerance anyway. And a pickup isn't designed to run into a specific impedance, so that if said impedance is wrong it affects the tone. I just demonstrated that a lower impedance pot will allow more top in a real world situation, when not turned up to full. When turned up to full, it would have to be a ridiculously out-of-spec pot to make any difference to the loading of the pup. [quote] Oh and by they way to a previous thing it was only a break if all three pots had a break in the same place which I think is unlikely. [/quote] Pots do fail at one end of their travel or the other more than in mid-track. Anyway, sounds like the previous pots were knackered/dirty/tired rather than 'cheap'.

[quote name='LukeFRC' timestamp='1344523476' post='1765933'] Guys dont want to excite anyone, but my warwick's pots cost 3 times a cts pot and sound 3 times as good. [/quote] You've tried cts pots in your Warwick?

[quote name='Johnston' timestamp='1344522684' post='1765915'] [url="http://www.axesrus.com/axeElectronicsPots.htm#Alpha"]http://www.axesrus.c...sPots.htm#Alpha[/url] I would take that as 500k being more treble than 250k But sure these things don't make a difference anyway. [/quote] With the greatest of respect to a company that sells guitar parts for a living, that's a tad oversimplified. I notice they don't explain their reasons for that statement. So I shall. If you take a high impedance pickup and try a 250k, a 500k and then a 1M pot at FULL VOLUME , then you will get slightly increasing high end with each substitution. That's because they are loading the inductive pickup less. However, as soon as you turn the volume down somewhat the capacitance of the cable (the long one between the guitar and amp, not the internal wire) becomes far more significant. You know how as you turn the volume down, the treble rolls off also? That effect is far less with a lower resistance pot. So in our example, at half-resistance the 250k pot is equivalent to 125k in series with the cable. The 1M pot offers four times that, meaning that the HF rolloff starts two octaves lower. I don't have a guitar lead handy to measure its capacitance, but making a conservative guess of 100pF (likely to be a lot more once the input stage of the amp is taken into account) that gives a -3dB point of 3kHz for the 1 meg pot and 12kHz for the 250k. That's science, that is

[quote name='Johnston' timestamp='1344520310' post='1765857'] I wasn't expecting to hear anything though when I put new pots on mine. I really only changed them because the difference in tone was negligible between open and closed. And any change that happened was at one extreme and like a switch. [/quote] Sounds like a break in the track. [quote] 500k to 250k and more treble which seems to against all convention of what the Pot ratings should do. [/quote] 250k will deliver more treble than 500k at less-than-full volume, as the series resistance into the capacitance of the cable is less. At full volume there may be marginally less treble depending on the pickup (500k is usually only required for high impedance humbuckers and even then probably not necessary for a bass) but probably not noticeable.

ON the dot.

[quote name='Stacker' timestamp='1344517478' post='1765804'] Perhaps I should have said 'gauge' rather than quality. Surely there's a contributing factor? [/quote] Nope, not at the tiny currents involved. And yes, Johnson, when you re-wired your old bass with wire stripped from 3 core it didn't make a difference. I make my living from electronics, fwiw, and I'm talking about what happens electrically. What one hears depends to a large extent on what happens electrically but also, as Mr Winer demonstrated, on what one expects or wants to hear. edited for appalling grammar

[quote name='chrismuzz' timestamp='1344516166' post='1765767'] How about if you turned the tone knob all the way up on both pots, but one of them was made cheaply/badly/inaccurately? Surely that could potentially prevent one of the pots from ever being able to be 'on full'? Just a thought. [/quote] I't have to be seriously broken for that to be the case, and would need to be replaced. The only way I can think of hobbling a pot so it can't be turned fully up is by jamming the spindle so it can't be turned all the way, or snapping it so it's uncoupled from the wiper.They're very simple and easily understood, mechanically and electrically.

[quote name='Bassman Rich' timestamp='1344515801' post='1765758'] Or is the 250/500 k ohms of the pot effectively in parallel to this signal going into the amp, and somehow taking some of the signal to ground? [/quote] Yes.

[quote name='Johnston' timestamp='1344514679' post='1765727'] Well if bad solder joints and increased resistance will affect the sound why won't the resistance of the wire and components? [/quote] The resistance of wire is so small compared to the rest of the circuitry, and at the tiny currents generated by pickups, that it has an effect approaching zero. You or I (and I have some £££ worth of test gear here) couldn't measure the diffrence in resistance between 10cm of the cheapest wire available and some cryogenically-treated oxygen-free Litz snakeoil gimmick (yours for £999 per metre, guaranteed to turn you into Wooton).

[quote name='Ou7shined' timestamp='1344514238' post='1765703'] I haven't the foggiest... but I imagine that the difference in capacitance between cheap pots and expensive pots is. [/quote] The capacitance of a pot is negligible compared to that of the pickups, tone control cap and cables, yes. However much it cost. re. the Ethan Winer clip, it's a favourite. Have you visited his site, tons of zero-bullshit information on acoustics, eq and much else.

[quote name='Mark_Andertons' timestamp='1344502548' post='1765414'] Yes. Pragmatically though I'd say a producer's job is to make a recording that will sell well and actually make the band some money. If you're just recording for 'arts' sake then you don't really need a producer, you can just produce yourself. [/quote] I don't get that at all. An appropriate producer will bring the best out of the song/band, thus making it better art as well as better product.

[quote name='Ou7shined' timestamp='1344460179' post='1765040'] I'm honestly pleased for anyone if they are happy with their new tone after swapping them out. Perhaps [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYTlN6wjcvQ"]this[/url] might be pertinent. [/quote] Highly pertinent, good man that Ethan. Also: the quality of wire between pickup and jack does NOT have an effect on the sound (unless you know you've replaced 'inferior' wire with 'superior' wire). I believe there's a $1000000 dollar prize for anyone that can prove it does. Been on offer for years now and no-one's dared claim it.

What Oops said. The jack sleeve, both pot bodies, the anticlockwise pin of both pots, the bridge and the shielding (the cavity is shielded, right? I can send you some ali tape if not, PM me) should all be interconnected.

it's simply that you prefer the sound of playing softly but amplifying it a lot. It's not really anything to do with the amp or speaker, you can demonstrate the same effect in a studio, adjusting the input gain of the mixer.

Cthulu in human form.

[quote name='iconic' timestamp='1344366745' post='1763560'] [i]this is painful, if no1 edukaked lyke cums along with the aunser I gunna av to kiss 'n tell....(spelying xampauls takem frum mi eeebay websyte males) [/i] [/quote] Album - Pelican West Bass chap - Les Nemes

[quote name='andydye' timestamp='1344366174' post='1763539'] Never would have guessed that! Album - Pelican West Bass chap - Les Nemes [/quote] What a colossal letdown. I was hoping for Lemsip Opec at the very least.

[quote name='iconic' timestamp='1344365215' post='1763510'] [b]bash my b*lls with an iron bar.....OK 1st clue....'erm lets make it not too easy, Times Crossword stylie.....a big selling LP....1st word 'a safe way to cross the road'![/b] [/quote] Jetpack Johnson! Of course!

[quote name='lojo' timestamp='1344364942' post='1763505'] Rob Brydon [/quote] It is, isn't it!