Zippy wrote:I haven't seen mention of what guitar the OP is using. What pickups?
I use both a Les Paul Custom with '59 style wiring and Seymour Duncan PAFs that are a little hotter than the original '59s. Also, I have a Fender Strat with '50s style wiring and reverse stagger Jimi Hendrix style pickups.
Thanks. I was wondering if your pickups were the super hot, mucho distortion style and providing too much input signal. That doesn't look the case.
What about your speaker cabinet? Might there be something wonky there?
What's the difference between low, standard, and high rotating friction pots? That's the options weber has.
The 20% pots are under guitar pots but they have some with solid shaft that will work with TW knobs. The serrated shaft would work with TW knobs too.
Rotating friction is the ease of knob rotation. Some pots like Bourns are hard turning while Alpha seem to turn like greased lightning. (low friction).
they have 10% tapers but the shift is shorter...will they not work?
The majority of modern era 500k pots are also a concern these days in your Les Paul. Most are are not very slow taper wise for use with an Express. Just like the amp a 10% measurement or less measured value when your guitar on "1" makes a world of difference. With nice taper guitar pots your clean range from the guitar should be about 3-5 with the amp cranked into decent gain territory. If your guitar needs to be down to 1-2 for cleans you need slower taper pots. PRS and new Gibson historic pots are decent, but few modern pots are.
geetarpicker wrote:The majority of modern era 500k pots are also a concern these days in your Les Paul. Most are are not very slow taper wise for use with an Express. Just like the amp a 10% measurement or less measured value when your guitar on "1" makes a world of difference. With nice taper guitar pots your clean range from the guitar should be about 3-5 with the amp cranked into decent gain territory. If your guitar needs to be down to 1-2 for cleans you need slower taper pots. PRS and new Gibson historic pots are decent, but few modern pots are.
Hadn't given much thought to my guitars pot tapers. I need to check those. But my Les Paul is highly modified and wired for much smoother pot adjustment.
Zippy wrote:I haven't seen mention of what is guitar the OP is using. What pickups?
I use both a Les Paul Custom with '59 style wiring and Seymour Duncan PAFs that are a little hotter than the original '59s. Also, I have a Fender Strat with '50s style wiring and reverse stagger Jimi Hendrix style pickups.
Thanks. I was wondering if your pickups were the super hot, mucho distortion style and providing too much input signal. That doesn't look the case.
What about your speaker cabinet? Might there be something wonky there?
I built it as a combo with one 65 watt Scumback M75-LD speaker and the cabinet is made of 70 year old solid pine.
geetarpicker wrote:The majority of modern era 500k pots are also a concern these days in your Les Paul. Most are are not very slow taper wise for use with an Express. Just like the amp a 10% measurement or less measured value when your guitar on "1" makes a world of difference. With nice taper guitar pots your clean range from the guitar should be about 3-5 with the amp cranked into decent gain territory. If your guitar needs to be down to 1-2 for cleans you need slower taper pots. PRS and new Gibson historic pots are decent, but few modern pots are.
Hadn't given much thought to my guitars pot tapers. I need to check those. But my Les Paul is highly modified and wired for much smoother pot adjustment.
You would be surprised!! I used to think my Les Paul was same way until Glen very kindly schooled me on that topic @ the first nashville amp show in 2009. Trying his express and a Liverpool he mentioned about my guitar pots not being good enough to control a wreck. At that time I had RS superpots which I though were good.
Now my Les Paul has Gibson historic pots and it is a diferent story. You should get those.
Last edited by redshark on Tue Dec 17, 2013 11:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Martin ran curves on some pots. Alpha 500ks almost perfectly cover 50's CTS. I bought 20 Alpha pots and 19 of them hit 521 or higher to I tinky 537. one measured 505.
I have a picture of me metering a Gibson piece of crap at 474k and another at 412k.
Martin ran curves on some pots. Alpha 500ks almost perfectly cover 50's CTS. I bought 20 Alpha pots and 19 of them hit 521 or higher to I tinky 537. one measured 505.
I have a picture of me metering a Gibson piece of crap at 474k and another at 412k.
Reeltarded wrote:Martin ran curves on some pots. Alpha 500ks almost perfectly cover 50's CTS.
I just plotted data Glen and others posted, then I think Vibratoking picked it up from there. Some very nice curves were done by John Suhr and posted here recently.
It's not the overall ohm reading of the pot that makes the taper difference, it's the resistance at various points in the rotation. Case in point I have some old '61 500k Centralabs in my historic reissue SG and they only read about 440k, BUT the taper in them is excellent and the guitar was a little bright anyway so 440k works just fine. My particular historic SG was made a couple years before Gibson more recently got the pots right, so I sourced some old pots for it.
In my other historic (an '03 R7) I have some recent era Gibson Historic pots in it and they read just a hair low but work quite well and have Centralabish (not really a word...) taper.
Here is a chart I made showing the resistance of the original Centralab 500k pots in my original '59 Les Paul at each number on the knobs. Note how slowly the resistance ramps up. The resistance is only about 50-60kish when at mid rotation. The net result is with a wreck your clean tones are with the guitar somewhere between 3-5 or so, where as with a typical modern pot the clean point might be a much narrower setting somewhere between 1 1/2-2 maybe... Point is, with a quick taper it's hard to quickly dial up the clean setting that isn't either too loud (and the amp is distorted) or shut off completely.
The new historic pots compare quite well in this detail, the trick is if your guitar has dark pickups you may have to go through a few of historic pots to find some that aren't too low in resistance as a lot of them tend to be.
I should mention even after going to the trouble of getting these pots it may still be a little trickier to get a backed off clean tone with a humbucker into Express compared to a single coil strat, BUT it's much much more doable!
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Last edited by geetarpicker on Tue Dec 17, 2013 11:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
In this video I demonstrate working the guitar knobs on my '59 Les Paul to control my Express. Also note the mid scoop effect on accentuating the cleans c/o the 50s wiring scheme in the guitar>
I have a picture of me metering a Gibson piece of crap at 474k and another at 412k.
The Gibson Historic pots that I own are in the 450k to 495k range of total resistance. So a little low. But the taper is the best taper of any new pot that I know of. The clean to mean with an Express is all about the taper and not about the total resistance. The pot has to come on SLOW.
It appears from my research about the Les Paul that my PAF's are rated at 7.5-9k on both and the Pots are CTS 575k plus hot pots. Don't know what the taper is. Probably have to open it up and do some testing.
