Stingray Style Humbucker Potentiometer and Capacitor Values?

[Obrienp]

Apologies if this has been asked before, I couldn’t find the thread. I need to tap the hive mind for this.

 

Background: I have a Vox Starstream H1, which is the passive single MM style humbucker model. The original pickup was very good but because of the 30” scale length (I suspect) the strings didn’t line up well with the pole pieces, particularly on the bass side. Consequently I decided to fit a bar magnet style replacement that could cope with the slightly narrower string spacing over the pickup. I found a Kent Armstrong that was about half the price of an equivalent Bartolini.
 

The OEM electronics in the Vox worked pretty well. A simple push-pull volume for parallel/serial switching and a single passive tone. However, the tone had very little effect in parallel mode and the pots were tiny. I decided to replace them with full size CTS pots and an orange drop cap. There were no markings on the original pots and cap, and no guidance with the pickup, so I assumed I needed 500k pots and a 22 cap to go with the humbucker. These are mounted through body in the Vox. 
 

After a little difficulty with the new CTS circuit board style push/pull pot, I got it all wired up and working. The set up works pretty well and I am getting more even string response than with the OEM pickup but I still have the issue with the tone not doing a lot in parallel mode. Thinking about this, it dawned on me that parallel mode is like having two single coils in one body: a bit like a Jazz bass with the pickups very close together. Conventionally single coils are wired up with 250k pots and 47 cap. This could explain why the 500k pots and 22 cap are making parallel mode very bright, and providing little tone control effect on my bass. Now I have never owned a Stingray style bass before but I understand the classic MM sound comes from the coils in parallel. Is this what they are meant to sound like?

 

My question to the hive is: what should the standard potentiometer and capacitor values be for a passive Stingray pickup? How do they cope with the different  values required for parallel and serial wiring?

 

I have previously wired up a bass using a humbucker and single coil into a single volume and tone control, with a telecaster style selector switch. To cope with the different values required for the two pickups, I used a work around I found online (StewMac I think): I wired a resistor in parallel to the hot wire of the single coil pickup that makes the pots look like 250 K to the pickup, even though they are actually 500K.  It works well, in that the single coil has calmed down in tone and volume, and the tone control does have an effect. Is this what MM/Sterling do for their passive basses, or is the parallel into 500k pots the classic Stingray tone? 

[Chiliwailer]

Yeah, typical Ray tone is parallel. 
 

The latest Passive Rays have a high output neodymium pickup. The USA short scale has a 500k volume and 100k tone. The Joe Dart has just a 100k vol pot. 
 

I put an alnico pickup in my short scale, with 250k (audio) for both (like my  P Bass) - my supposed logic being that the albino is not as bright as the neo, and on the USA short scale 500+100 is 600, so my use of 250 + 250 is near that 600 total but less bright perhaps. It was good, but I found the 100k seemed better for hearing a difference in tone when adjusting through the sweep. For me, the 250k needed to be much near the end of the sweep to be useful. 
 

Just food for thought rather than advice. 

Edited July 6, 2022 by Chiliwailer