deleting tone pot in G & L Bluesboy

[gchastine]

Hello,
I have a question, has anyone ever unwired the tone pot in their tele? How does it sound? The reason I ask is I think tone pots hamper the full tone of the pickup. I don't use the tone pot anyway but I didn't know if it had to be wired up or not.

Thanks,
Greg

[scooteraz]

You can unwire the tone pot. It is not required to get the signal to the output jack.

The current version of the American Deluxe Telecasters has a tone pot that has a position where it switches itself out of the circuit. Provides slightly more gain. If you replace your tone pot with a similar one to the Deluxe, you have the best of both worlds.

[boris bubbanov]

All the stock Squier 51s are like that, no tone pot at all.
Loosen your control plate and use an alligator clip on your guitar to bypass the pot, to see if you like what you get.
Or you might bypass the tone only on your bridge MFD or your Seth Lover neck pickup.
The setup on the Squier 51 works in part, IMHO, because you can tap the bridge humbucker and then add in the neck single coil, five choices. You'll only have three if you use no tone control. But if yer dimed all the time anyway like Neil Young, yer losing nothing.

[6x47]

Originally Posted by gchastine

Hello,
I have a question, has anyone ever unwired the tone pot in their tele? How does it sound?

One of my control plates is set up with a push - pull volume pot.

Nob up is standard wiring, nob down bypasses the tone pot and the volume pot (running the pups straight through with no impedence from 'controls') giving instant increase in volume and a way more treble than if you had the pot set to not bleed off treble.

Seems the tone pot by just being a part of the circuit, dulls the tone even if set on 'full treble'.

Probably get the same result by wiring a toggle switch to the pickup switch output wire so that in one position the signal goes through the controls to output jack while in the other position the signal goes through a new wire to the output jack. I haven't tried this yet.

[aznrambo481]

The inside of a potentiometer is a metal brush connected to the middle lug that runs over a resistive strip. depending on how far it is from one of the sides, you will get a different resistance.



If you scratch of the strip at one of the ends, you have the middle lug not touching the material. at this point, the middle lug(the part that affects the signal) is effectively removed from the capacitor-to-ground circuit controlled by the potentiometer. I believe they make 'em like this, called no-load tone pots. Never tried it.

[chuckamok63]

or If you're not so sure about ripping apart your pots you can just purchase a no-load pot and bypass the scraping. When the pot is at "10" the pot is out of the circuit. Very cool sound, kind of "the push over the top/it goes to 11"

[scooteraz]

Originally Posted by aznrambo481

The inside of a potentiometer is a metal brush connected to the middle lug that runs over a resistive strip. depending on how far it is from one of the sides, you will get a different resistance.



If you scratch of the strip at one of the ends, you have the middle lug not touching the material. at this point, the middle lug(the part that affects the signal) is effectively removed from the capacitor-to-ground circuit controlled by the potentiometer. I believe they make 'em like this, called no-load tone pots. Never tried it.

While this can be done, it is usually more trouble than it is worth with sealed pots (most new pots). The problem is getting them apart in the first place (you can, but sealed means sealed, so you have to cleanly break the seal) then back together cleanly. Remember, any additional dirt in the pot will be additional scratchiness when you use it. If you want to, have at it, just saying forewarned is forearmed.

or If you're not so sure about ripping apart your pots you can just purchase a no-load pot and bypass the scraping. When the pot is at "10" the pot is out of the circuit. Very cool sound, kind of "the push over the top/it goes to 11"

This is the appropriate method.

You can get such pots here: http://www.acmeguitarworks.com/250K_...TS__P34C14.cfm

I have no affiliation, just have had good experiences.