If you have a telecaster with a humbucker in the neck and a single coil pickup in the bridge, it can be diffcult deciding on which pots and capacitors to choose. Typicaly you'd install 500k pots, which are great for humbuckers, but single coils sound much better through 250k pots ...If you have a telecaster with a humbucker in the neck and a single coil pickup in the bridge, it can be diffcult deciding on which pots and capacitors to choose. Typicaly you'd install 500k pots, which are great for humbuckers, but single coils sound much better through 250k pots.
The solution to this problem is simple, and inexpensive - Add a resitor from the bridge to the hot ground - How it works - When you use two resistors in Parallel, one side of each resistor connects to the same location. For example, your Volume Pot is a resistor: 250K/500K are the resistance values. One side of the pot is a hot, or input, and one side of the pot is Ground.
If you attach a resistor from the Hot of a pickup, and one leg to ground, youre putting that resistor in Parallel. See below for the equation of using 2 Resistors in Parallel:As you see, if you put a 470K resistor in parallel with a 500K pot, the Bridge Pickup will see a 250K pot. This is great for your Telecaster as it youll have a great sounding Neck Humbucker and a perfect-sounding Bridge Single Coil.
- The above formula works well when youre on your Neck pickup and Bridge Pickup only. However, when you get in the Middle Position, youre adding yet another resistor. Your Neck Pickup (500K) Your Bridge Pickup (500K) and the Parallel Resistor (~470K).
When you combine your neck and bridge using this resistor trick, the middle position will see a 163K pot, making it darker than usual. - Tranform your pots - You can also use a resistor in a guitar to change your pot value. This is handy when you only have a 500K pot on hand, but you need a 250K pot.
If you have a ~500K Resistor, you can make this happen! See below for a diagram on how to wire this up:In the above image, you have a 470K resistor in Parallel with your Volume Pot. The pot values resistance is 500K, and your Resistor is 470K with a combined resistance of 242K. Pretty neat! You can use this trick to take a bit of high-end off of your pots as well.
Lets say you have a 500K pot, and your pickups are just a little too bright on them: you can add a 1Meg resistor like the image above, and youve turned your 500K pot into a 333K pot. This will tame some of the highs. Department: Northwest Guitars, Guitar Electrics, Guitar Resistors, Vishay , R-470