250K VS 500k tone pots

[lock-ny]

what is the difference and what do musicman guitars come with. I have 2 axis and a silo special, do thy all come with the same post and how will they sound if I change them from wht they are now? - russ

 

[beej]

The Axis comes with 500k pots. The Silo Special has 250k pots. (The Axis has humbuckers; the Silo Special mainly has single coils.)

The larger the pot value, the brighter the output from the pickup will be. And vice versa. If you take your Axis and swap in 250k pots, it will sound darker. If you put 500k pots in your Sil Special, it will sound brighter.

Most humbuckers use 500k pots while single coils use 250k pots- in general humbuckers are less bright than single coils.

 

[Luiz Gustavo]

Good explanation.

 

[lock-ny]

Thanks beej, one more Q, my silo special has a bucker in the bridge, does that mean it comes with a 500 pot?

 

[beej]

Thanks beej, one more Q, my silo special has a bucker in the bridge, does that mean it comes with a 500 pot?

Hey- happy to help!

Yeah, it'll still have 250k pots. Humbuckers can usually work with either 250k or 500k pots- they're often "voiced" depending on how they're going to be wired up. (Whereas single coils almost never use 500k pots.) The HB on the Sil Spec is pretty bright to start with.

So when you see a HB mixed with singles, the pots are usually 250k.

 

[beej]

Hey- wanted to clarify one thing. When we talk about 250k vs 500k pots, we're really talking about both tone and vol pots. The resistance seen by the pickups is the combination of both pots.

So for 500k pots, the total resistance is 1/R=1/500+1/500 so R=250k. For 250k pots the total resistance is 125k.

Just mentioning this in case you're going to swap out one pot while leaving the other the same- in that case just do the math to see what the total load will be.