500k Pots?!??

Can someone explain why these work better for humbuckers than 250K? And if you change the tone pot, are you supposed to change the volume pot too?

I posted here the other day b/c by Dream 180 sounded muddy in the neck pos on my MIM Tele, and people said to change the pot. I bought two on my way home from work and replaced the tone pot and things definitely sound better.

Will I notice a change if I swap out the volume pot too, from 250k to 500k?

The bridge pup is a SD Vintage Stack anyway so that's a 'bucker too.

Can someone explain why these work better for humbuckers than 250K?

Because Humbucker are generally rate between 6.0K to 8.0K Ohms (sometimes more sometime less it depends on who buy them from)

And if you change the tone pot, are you supposed to change the volume pot too?

You can experiment if you want to.

Will I notice a change if I swap out the volume pot too, from 250k to 500k?

It will be a lot brighter then a 250K

I use a SD JB & Jazz combination in one of my PRS's.
I found them too shrill with 500k pots.
Going to 250k pots dealt with the this problem really well.
It depends on what sort of sound you are going for- also the amp eq has a lot of effect.

i don't think 500k pots work better with "humbuckers", in that there's somethin' about bucking hum that makes a pickup work better with 500k pots, it's just that Gibson designed their humbucker to be used with 500k pots, and so that's how they tend to sound best!

Since humbuckers are much warmer than single coils and have a lot less high end to them 500K pots are used to allow more of that high end through so that they don't get too muddy sounding. Similarly, since single-coil pups are so bright they use 250K pots to bleed off more of the high frequencies and tame the high end.

I know a common mod with teles and other single-coil guitars is to use a 500K pot on the volume but leave the tone pot at 250K, as the tone pot doesn't affect the overall output as much as the volume pot does. This will allow more of the brightness through, at the possible risk of an icepick to your brain high end.

And I believe that traditional 50's Les Paul wiring had 300K volume pots installed, or at least that's what they're using on a lot of their reissues. Supposedly along with slightly different wiring it is one of the key elements to the classic 50's Les Paul sound.

I was wondering b/c whenever I print out the wiring diagrams from SD's website, it always shows 250k pots in both positions. But there is obviously more to this than meets the eye (or ear).

I'm afrait to even ask about the little capacitor that sits between the two pots...

250K, 500K or 1 meg will all work on either single coils or humbuckers, but the higher the value the less high end is bled off, so the brighter the pickup will sound. The trade off is that the higher the pot value, the shorter the pot's usable taper or throw. I like two 500Ks or a 500K and a 250K for single coils and two 500s or higher for humbuckers. I have a 68 tele with single coils and two 1 meg pots, and a 75 tele custom with four 1 meg pots (humbucker & single coil), both 100% stock. The 1 megs give the pickups great sparkle and bite.