Help choosing replacement Les Paul pots - good quality (linear?) taper.

timmypix

Hi all,

Diving into the world of doing my own wiring with a couple of small jobs, the first of which is replacing the volume pots on my recently acquired second Les Paul.

It's currently got the stock Gibson 300k linear pots in it, and it sounds like it's got a blanket over it. Rather than jump straight to changing the pickups, I'm trying changing the pots first to see if the opens the top end up a bit.

Normally I'd just buy some CTS 500k log pots and be done with it, as that seems to be the done thing, but this being my first guitar with decent linear pots, I'm actually really loving how they respond. Rather than having a quick volume off switch with very little response below 8 on the knob, I can use the whole range of the volume pot to clean up my amp, and I don't want to lose that.

What's muddying the waters as I look into this is that there seem to be lots of options featuring custom or vintage audio tapers, which seem to fall somewhere in between pure log and linear tapers: Six String Supplies seem to have a special version; both they and Charles Guitars seem to have these "TVT" pots; Charles Guitars have these special RS Guitarworks ones; Bare Knuckle also have a "custom audio taper" pot. All of these claim to have nice even tapers with no sudden changes or drop-offs, so I'm wondering what makes them different to normal log or linear tapers.

Further complicating matters, some of these "special" pots are available as push-pulls, which would suit my other Les Paul - it has coil splits but if I could get a more even taper so the pots are as useable as the Gibson ones, that would be a big plus and a project for when I'm more confident in my soldering.

So, please could anyone with experience with these pots or just general know-how weigh in on the differences? I'm feeling a little lost/overwhelmed!

Rocker

Talk to @sixstringsupplies.  He posts here and sells good quality components for guitars.

ICBM

500K Linear pots will do what you want probably - the brighter tone of the higher resistance but still with the taper you like.

You can also change them to the '50s' wiring scheme which has the tone caps connected to the middle (switch) terminal of the control not the input (pickup) terminal... this means that the tone control is effectively rolled up as the volume goes down, which retains brightness better. Personally I'm not a huge fan, it makes the controls more interactive which can be a bit fiddly.

sixstringsupplies

https://www.sixstringsupplies.co.uk/audio-or-linear-pots

There's a graph on the bottom of that page that shows all the different possible tapers you can order from CTS when designing your custom spec pots.

Every taper has a drop of a 1-2, even linear cuts out at 1, rather than 0.

For your needs, you would want either the 30% taper or 25% taper, or linear as ICBM suggests.

Mojotone sell 30% taper
SSS Premium are 25% taper
TVT pots are 15% taper

timmypix

@ICBM and @sixstringsupplies thank you both. That  blog post and graph in particular are really helpful!

timmypix

@sixstringsupplies having read far too many forum posts, the thread on here praising your SSS custom pots has convinced me they're the way to go for what I want, so I'll place an order shortly.
Should I decide to change my other LP, are your push-pull CTS pots SSS/custom taper as well, or are they just the regular 10% log?

sixstringsupplies

@timmypix sounds good. The push pulls are standard 10% audio taper.
I'll be getting SSS push pull pots in 2021. I imagine the Bare Knuckle 280k/550k push pulls have a more rounded taper, but I've never measured one so can't really comment on it specifically.