A or B pots for volume and tone controls ― what's your preference?

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LVC
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A or B pots for volume and tone controls ― what's your preference?

Post by LVC » Sun Sep 26, 2021 8:24 am

I've always used A (i.e. audio/logarithmic taper) pots for volume and tone controls on all the guitars I've messed with, and it's always worked for me.

Then lately I've put new pickups in two guitars and changed the pots to better matching 500k (A) ones, and the taper of the volume pots on both guitars suddenly sounded all wrong to my ears, verging on unusable. I chalked it up to these particular pots being crappy (AFAIK most pots have a tolerance range of 20%, which is huge) or even faulty, and I've ordered replacements in both A and B tapers just to be on the safe side.

While I'm waiting for them to arrive, I was wondering what everyone's preference was in this matter?
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alexpigment
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Re: A or B pots for volume and tone controls ― what's your preference?

Post by alexpigment » Sun Sep 26, 2021 10:43 am

I've heard for quite a few people that it's best to use linear for volume and audio for tone. I use audio for both volume and tone on mine, but there are a few caveats: 1) I always use 50s wiring, 2) I use 250k pots, 3) I always have a little bit of gain or compression going on and get my cleans through my volume knob. I don't know how many of those factors are important, but I know that there is no simple one-size-fits-all solution when choosing pot types.

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ChrisDesign
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Re: A or B pots for volume and tone controls ― what's your preference?

Post by ChrisDesign » Sun Sep 26, 2021 11:10 am

Try audio taper for everything and see how you feel. A pot is about £8, so it’s a cheap experimentation.
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Re: A or B pots for volume and tone controls ― what's your preference?

Post by HarlowTheFish » Sun Sep 26, 2021 11:22 am

I'm an A for both kinda guy, but I'm fine with linear as well. Like AlexPigment above mentioned, I also basically always have some amount of compression/distortion going on so the audio taper lets me clean up more easily and have a bit more control over where exactly I wanna set my volume -- with a linear pot I basically have to go down to 3 or 4 to get the same tone that would be around 7 on an audio taper.

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Re: A or B pots for volume and tone controls ― what's your preference?

Post by jorri » Sun Sep 26, 2021 3:05 pm

Lin vol and aud tone as stock

To me it sounds balanced for volume on lin. Better for swelling. Audio gives more attenuation which is better for 'cleanup' give drive will compress the signal.

Tone definately needs audio. Ive considered it needs MORE curviness to balance out the frequencies as the darker side is in the last quarter and the really notched resonant 'off' part is below '1'.

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Re: A or B pots for volume and tone controls ― what's your preference?

Post by Veitchy » Sun Sep 26, 2021 3:48 pm

As someone who basically learned electric on Teles and has deeply internalised riding the vol/tone all the time to get my sound, the linear/audio arrangement in JMs is a bit problematic for me. I find that the volume doesn't really change from 2 to about 7, then gradually rolls up to max. Makes it virtually impossible to deftly do volume swells with the pot too as it's really on/off with my setup. If I put new pickups in my JM I reckon I'm going to swap for audio/audio at the same time.

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