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500K Pots


waldemar
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Hiya.

I bought a stacked 500K pot for use in my current project. To be honest it was more of a forced decision as you wouldn't believe how much of a faff it is to get hold of 250K stacks - yes, Allparts have 'em, but unfortunately the corresponding knobs are out of stock...

As I understand it, 500's will give me a brighter sound and slightly more output. I do occasionally use more treble, but I'm not after a super-bright sound that I can't dial out - is there still going to be enough adjustment using a 500K to knock off the treble when it isn't needed?

Can I compensate for the excess treble with the capacitor?

Cheers!

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Hi
I'm sure there will be many learned opinions on this but, in my own experience, the tone is affected as much by the wood, the pickups, the strings, etc, etc as much as it is by the pots. Having 250's when you need 500's can be a problem because you simply can't achieve the brightness for some setups. 500's instead of 250's has never given me a problem and I've fitted and changed dozens.

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The real-world difference is minimal.

As Andy above has mentioned your pot value has about as much impact on the tone as the wood does ... ie. pups and strings have an infinitesimally more greater affect.
All it means is that the values through the sweep between 0 to 10 is changed, as all you are doing is going from zero resistance to it's top value resistance (whatever it may be) and with a 500k pot at some point during the sweep you will be hitting 250k anyway then as you sweep past it you bleed off less and less top end.

You might hear the difference more with guitars than basses (which is probably why you read about it all the time) but in reality you will have a more noticeable impact on the tone bleed off with the choice of capacitor value than you will with a pot.

Edited by Ou7shined
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[quote name='waldemar' timestamp='1322103431' post='1446596']
Hiya.

I bought a stacked 500K pot for use in my current project. To be honest it was more of a forced decision as you wouldn't believe how much of a faff it is to get hold of 250K stacks - yes, Allparts have 'em, but unfortunately the corresponding knobs are out of stock...

As I understand it, 500's will give me a brighter sound and slightly more output. I do occasionally use more treble, but I'm not after a super-bright sound that I can't dial out - is there still going to be enough adjustment using a 500K to knock off the treble when it isn't needed?

Can I compensate for the excess treble with the capacitor?

Cheers!
[/quote]

I faced this problem recently - easily solved.
I bought a 250k/500k stacked CTS pot from Allparts and a 250k CTS solid shaft pot from Allparts
The pots are easy to dismantle and transplanting the wiper from the 250k single pot into the 500k slice of the stacked pot( the top pot) converted the 250/500 into stacked 250k.

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