pot taper question

[daz]

It doesn't make sense to me that this would be possible, but i'm gonna ask anyways. It it possible that pot taper could cause a strats tone to become dull and lifeless when you roll it down to clean up, EVEN WITH a treble bleed cap? Doesn't make sense to me that a odd pot taper could cause that, but i have a classic vibe strat with tonerider pickups (which a lot of people seem to like even tho they are cheap) and after trying several treble bleed caps and unhooking the tone controls, turning the volume down to get the chimey cleans i normally get with all my other guitars yields a dark muddy tone like theres no bleed cap at all. The pot measures a bit lower than 250k but nothing abnormal. And with nothing in the signal chain within the guitar now other then the volume pot, switch and pickups i'm going to guess it must be the pickups. I's swap out the pot but i don't have any 250's on hand.

I oaded a guard with known good pickups into it to test it and the tone was lovely. So theres the question....could pot taper be the cause?

[Chuck H]

The straight answer is no. The pot taper will only affect knob setting, not tone in any way with all other things being equal. That is, same bright circuit, pickups, tone pot/cap value, etc. Which means all other things aren't equal. Now you get to find out what. I'll guess it's the pickups may be somehow different than typical and their particular resonant properties aren't playing nice with the 250k pot value. I might try changing to 500k pots and half the value of the tone cap and your usual bright cap.

[daz]

I didn't think so, but turns out i just spaced and connected the bleed cap wrong. I've probably installed them 300 times in my life and i either spaced or at my age i may have alzheimers. Doh. This drove me nuts till i pictured what i had done when iside and it seemed like i recalled connecting one leg to the ground lug instead of the input lug, and sure enough that was it. No wonder the thing sounded so fat with single coils when on 10 !

[Chuck H]

It probably hasn't been a year since the last time I soldered a cable jack without putting the sleeve on first You'd think that mistake would stick!?! "It" happens.

[Enzo]

One good side of retiring, I likely will never make those mistakes again. Again being the operative word.

We all do it.

[Mick Bailey]

Don't be too sure; I hear that in the Afterlife your daily existence for an eternity consists of repeating all the mistakes you made in life.

You can avoid this by sending $10 to the Reverend Mick.

[Enzo]

Oh thank you. I will send that right along just as soon as I get to the afterlife.

[Mick Bailey]

Shit. I just read this with a mouthful of half-chewed peanuts. Most I snorted out of my nose and between the keys on my laptop. The rest nearly choked me.

[J M Fahey]

One good side of retiring, I likely will never make those mistakes again.

You sure?
No need to be at a Tech Lab to do silly Techie things

What about putting batteries the wrong way on something?

[Enzo]

Oh I will make plenty of NEW mistakes, but I doubt I will ever solder a plug on the end of a cable again. I doubt I will ever neglect to trim off a cap or resistor lead, install the board and have the lead wire short something to ground. Probably never again measure B+ voltage with my meter set up for milliamps. BZZZT.