Pots and Caps
"What pot and cap values do you recommend?"
I get this question more than any other and this is what I always tell people: if you're putting the pickups into your current guitar keep whatever you have and adjust from there. If it's a new guitar I like 500k with just about all of my pickups, but that's my personal preference. I like a lot of high-end.
You can get as far into the weeds as you want about the technical reasons for selecting pot and cap values, but in my opinion none of it really matters especially not in the real world. I've tried to study it to the best of my ability and it is EXTREMELY complicated and you really only end up figuring out the optimal combination for voltage output which has nothing to do with anything.
I like .05uf caps, but again that's a personal preference. They're a little less common than .022uf or .047uf, but they were used in a lot of the guitars that I'm into especially the old MIJ pickups.
So I have 500k pots and .05uf caps. Basically brighter pots and a darker cap. If you use a low value cap like a .01uf there's going to be less of a difference between 0 and 10, but you can really fine tune what you want within that range. If you use a high value cap like .1uf there's going to be a wider sweep but less tuneability.
You can mix and match pot values; 250k volume and 500k tone has been done in the past. Again, and believe me I hate getting this for answer, there is no right answer.
One thing I will say is that you can definitely splurge on this. I do like an audio pot on the volume and linear on the tone. Get the lowest tolerance you can find. Buy a nice cap. There's tons of people making nice repro caps. I've bought a bunch of NOS caps on eBay, but you have to be careful that they're not fried. I bought a cheap cap tester online. It's possible for them to read the correct capacitance, but still be fried.
I get this question more than any other and this is what I always tell people: if you're putting the pickups into your current guitar keep whatever you have and adjust from there. If it's a new guitar I like 500k with just about all of my pickups, but that's my personal preference. I like a lot of high-end.
You can get as far into the weeds as you want about the technical reasons for selecting pot and cap values, but in my opinion none of it really matters especially not in the real world. I've tried to study it to the best of my ability and it is EXTREMELY complicated and you really only end up figuring out the optimal combination for voltage output which has nothing to do with anything.
I like .05uf caps, but again that's a personal preference. They're a little less common than .022uf or .047uf, but they were used in a lot of the guitars that I'm into especially the old MIJ pickups.
So I have 500k pots and .05uf caps. Basically brighter pots and a darker cap. If you use a low value cap like a .01uf there's going to be less of a difference between 0 and 10, but you can really fine tune what you want within that range. If you use a high value cap like .1uf there's going to be a wider sweep but less tuneability.
You can mix and match pot values; 250k volume and 500k tone has been done in the past. Again, and believe me I hate getting this for answer, there is no right answer.
One thing I will say is that you can definitely splurge on this. I do like an audio pot on the volume and linear on the tone. Get the lowest tolerance you can find. Buy a nice cap. There's tons of people making nice repro caps. I've bought a bunch of NOS caps on eBay, but you have to be careful that they're not fried. I bought a cheap cap tester online. It's possible for them to read the correct capacitance, but still be fried.