pickups & pots.....

For reasons that we can discuss / debate separately, I'm considering putting a full-size humbucker in the neck of one of my teles. The bridge has a Voodoo in it and that glorious pickup isn’t going anywhere!

Presently, the vol pot is 250K

My concern is that the humbucker will be too dark & muddy with a 250K pot…it ought to have a 500K. But a 500K pot will turn the Voodoo into a pretty unsuitably-bright pickup.

There’s lots & lots of teles out there with humbuckers in the neck…..what pot is being used?

I suppose I could get a dual 250K pot and replace one of the wafers with a 500K wafer, so each pickup “sees” an appropriate load. But when they’re both “on”, the loading will go down to 166K, which becomes unacceptably low for either pickup.

Does anyone make a 3position, 3 pole switch? I could use a 500K pot, and use the 3rd pole to bootstrap a resistor in parallel with the pot for the bridge position….

But all of this seems like “over engineering”…….I suppose most folks just slap in a pickup & play music.

What’s the generally-accepted “right way”? Any ideas?

Mark, I don't know about "right," but Ginger has a 250K volume pot and it works well. To balance the tone of the pickups, I used a .022 uf cap on the neckbucker and .047 on the brige pickup and I very rarely have to touch the tone knob when switching between pickups.


I bookmarked a link that shows how to wire the standard switch, I'll try to remember to post it after I get home.

The way Fender did it for the American Tele HS was using 500k pots, standard 3-way switch and a resistor. The diagram is here (http://www.fender.com/support/diagrams/pdf_temp1/telecaster/0118600A/SD0118600APg2.pdf), the parts list is here (http://www.fender.com/support/diagrams/pdf_temp1/telecaster/0118600A/SD0118600APg3.pdf). According to that parts list, Fender used a 270k resistor. I forget which size resistor I have in mine now, I've tried a couple different sizes.

Ah HA!! So they did bootstrap it! I guess my idea wasn't so far off target!

But 270K strikes me as a bit low.....time to play around some!

Thanks! This is just what I needed....

If you use a 500K pot and you want the bridge pickup to see 250K, then put a 500K resistor across the bridge pickup (like the diagram linked above). (2) 500K resistors in parallel = 250K.

Doesn't that extra resistor change the slope of the volume pot though? With the volume at 1/2, it would be (whatever midpoint is on an audio taper pot) in parallel with 500K.

Doesn't that extra resistor change the slope of the volume pot though? With the volume at 1/2, it would be (whatever midpoint is on an audio taper pot) in parallel with 500K.

No, the volume control is not a rheostat. When the volume pot is set to 1/2 point (or any point), it is still a 500K load to the pickup. If your load impedance (amp and cable) were significantly low, then a slight taper change may occur.

If you place a resistor from the wiper to either the ground lug, or the pickup input side, it will radically change the taper. It makes the pot more linear. See this post (http://www.tdpri.com/forum/tele-tech/24057-altering-pot-taper-resistor.html).