aerosmithfan95

Hey, what's up? I rarely come to the side of the forums, but I was wondering if you guys can clear up some questions that I have about buying new parts for my Kramer.

1) The pots in my guitar are 250K pots (B I think, but there's solder covering up most of them besides the number) for the volume and two tones. I was going to buy 500k pots, but I wasn't really sure what the differences between audio and linear pots and what ones to get for 1 volume and 1 tone. Can someone please explain the difference(s)?

2) I'm not really sure what the difference between 0.022uf and 0.047uf capacitors are. From what I know, one let's less treble go when you turn down the tone knob, but what else should I know about them?

Thanks for taking the time to read this and helping out!

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AF95

Epiphone LP Standard w/ Seymour Duncans
Kramer Focus 3000
Marshall Vintage Modern 2266
A handful of pedals

W4RP1G

An audio taper pot has a more gradual roll-off. A linear tape seems roll-off very heavily at around 7. I prefer audio tapers because a linear taper feels like I have less control over the roll-off. And I find that an audio taper volume with a treble bleed works more like a bass-cut in my Ibanez. When I had the same thing with a linear pot, I didn't even know it has a treble bleed. The volume just rolled off way too much, so I didn't like to use it too much.

As for the caps, the typical humbucker cap is a .022. A .047 rolls off the highs far too much for me, which makes the tone unusable when rolled all the way back. You might like that, idk, but I did not.

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Homemade pickup winder!

JimDawson

An audio taper pot has kind of an S curve from the max to the minimum if you imagine it like a graph. A linear pot just goes straight from the max value to the minimum in a straight line. What this means is that at the ends (around 7 and up to about 3 and below) it doesn't change the resistance as quickly as a linear pot.

As for capacitors, they are what make your tone pots tone pots. Basically, a tone pot is a high-pass filter. With a higher value cap, you lose more highs through the ground than lower value ones because high-frequency signals pass through capacitors (and on to ground) more readily.

Check out this three-part youtube video on the subject:

EDIT: Actually, I think I might have gotten the terminology behind low and high-pass filters confused. The point is that higher value capacitors = less highs when you turn your tone knob down.

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