Jazzmaster HH's 250k Tone pot?

[ChrisDesign]

So Fender uses a 250k tone pot, with a .1 uF capacitor) on their HH Jazzmasters (the old Standard and the new Player).

Seymour Duncan recommends 500k pots for Humbuckers and 250k pots for single coil. I assume this means the jazzmasters' 250k tone pot will sound great when the humbucker's coils are split. But won't this make the humbuckers sound a little dull bleeding the top end off into a relatively high value capacitor? This is half the resistance and twice the capacitance.

Do other guitars go against standardisation and do this?

[Embenny]

There are no hard rules with pots. Danelectros have super bright, low-output single coil lipsticks and came with 1Meg volume and 100k tone pots, not to mention series wiring rather than parallel.

Jaguars and Jazzmasters have 1Meg pots all around in the lead circuit with single coils, which is straight up heresy if you believe in the 250k single coil/500k humbucker doctrine...and yet, they have more than a few fans of their stock wiring.

The effect of dropping the resistance of the pots is essentially a flattening/de-emphasis of the resonant peak of the pickup. The HBs in the Player JM might have been specifically wound to sound good with 250k. The reason a lot of people prefer 500k on HBs is likely that PAFs were designed with 500k in mind (and two pots per pickup, as well).

[timtam]

For the record, the player series JM and HH standard have 500k volume and 250k tone ...
https://www.fmicassets.com/Damroot/Orig ... _Rev_A.pdf
https://www.fmicassets.com/Damroot/Orig ... Manual.pdf

Effect of volume and tone pots ...
https://www.stewmac.com/How-To/Online_R ... hoose.html

[redchapterjubilee]

My Standard had 500k volume with push/pull pot for coil split and 250k tone stock. I replaced the push/pull with normal 500k volume/tone when I swapped out for the Fralin PAF's I have in it now.

[SY6655321]

Some original Les Paul Jr.s came with a 500k vol, 250k tone.

[jorri]

Doesnt make a lot of sense as a log 500k tone will measure 250k at around 90% of its turn. Id say go higher. Im replacing the 250k on my jazz bass to 1meg. I can turn it down. Some amps are muddy, so its useful.
That doesnt really apply to volume controls though. Depends how its wired. Technically a volume control keeps all the resistance somewhere in the cicuit, doing something.
The parallel summation of the resistance determines the amount of resonant peak.
A jag is 2x1meg so sums to 500k. A 500k+250k sums to 160k approximately, somewhere in between the two normal values as you would expect.

[jorri]

... But the point of explaining that was, often HH guitars have 3 or 4 500k pots, dependingbon how its split with controls for each pickup. So they could sum to 250k if only use one pickup. Or 160k,or as low as 125k if 4 pots are currently active. So its not that far from the mark.
A jazz bass goes to around 80k because 3x250k pots (250k/3)

[ChrisDesign]

I’ve bought a 250k fender push pull pot to replace my tone pot and restore my Guitar to factory design. I will let you know how, or if, the tone changes.

[kimson]

My Bullet Mustang came stock with 250k pots and it sounded amazing: muscular, middle-y and mellow. No sign of the usual ear-grating HB harshness.

Maybe it's just me, but still...

[jvin248]

.

Use the volume pot kohms that gets you the tone you want.

250k will be darker
500k will be brighter
1Meg will be even more bright

Pots have a 20% tolerance range and it matters even within the above categories.... in the same trend
Maxed out 250k is 275k to be still in spec
Min 500k is 450k to be still in spec
Those extremes are getting pretty close to each other.

I have found I don't worry about the tone pot, it's really just the volume pot. And the tone capacitor -- try different capacitor values (brand doesn't matter).

.

[ChrisDesign]

I’ve finally soldered in my 250k tone to replace the 500k tone. Wow!

When I originally bought the guitar I was in love. I tried the American jaguar and the Mexican jazzmaster, and I chose the Mexican jazzmaster our of choice. Then I swapped the bridge pickup, burnt out the time pot with bad soldering, and subbed in the 500k tone pot. I was never happy. The response of the tone pot was gone. The time just wasn’t as good. I assumed it was the Seymour Duncan JB I had loaded that wasn’t any good. I was wrong.

Now my tone is warm and smooth again. Single coils sound，and the tone pot is responsive again. The awesome guitar I thought I had lost is now back! The treble bleed on the volume knob probably helps that magic too. I’m loving this combination so much I’m considering putting 250k tone pots and .1uF caps in my Les Paul. Maybe...

I am now in love with my jazzmaster again!