Q: I have a guitar with two humbuckers, each of which has its own volume and tone control. I bought it a few years ago. My friend just bought the same guitar, but his sounds much more open and brighter than mine. We opened them up, and found that mine uses 300k–ohm volume pots and his has 500k-ohm pots. We know that the higher value pots allow more highs through, so this makes sense with what we heard.
Here’s the question: could we mix the pot values in a guitar to “custom-tailor” the sound of each pickup? For example, put a 500k pot on the neck humbucker for a brighter, more open tone, but put a 300k pot on the bridge to get a darker, thicker tone. If so, what happens when both pickups are turned on? Is there any weirdness because of the different pot values?
A: Our offhand answer is, yes, you can mix pot values in the same guitar without problem, even when pickups are combined, such as in the middle pickup selector switch position on a Les Paul.
But to ensure we had all our facts correct, we consulted tech wizard Frank Falbo from Seymour Duncan. He confirmed that each pickup can have its own volume pot value, which allows you to customize the tonal response a bit. According to Frank, when the two pickups are combined, each pickup is loading the other heavily, making the pickups’ interaction with the pot values insignificant in the grand scheme of things. (The overall impedance of the two combined pickups in parallel is much lower, and therefore less tonally affected by the paralleled pots’ value.)
In Frank’s words: “The moral of the story is to go ahead and choose your optimum/favorite pot value for each pickup respectively, without worrying about any negative side effects on the combined pickup position.”
