No-Load Blend Pots

[Blues Sr.]

I play a '02 PRS McCarty and I'm thinking of replacing the pickup selector with a pan pot. A guitar tech told me he did this with his Santana model. He loved it but could only get about a 90%-10% pickup power ratio. Since I'm taking out the selector switch I need a 100%-0% ratio. Is there a no load pan pot out there or can I custom order one, and will this work if I can find it?

Thanks,
Blues Sr.

[Steve Conner]

Never seen such a thing.

But if you use a dual-gang linear pot, and wire it as if it were two volume controls, one going clockwise and the other anticlockwise, then you can get down to 0%.

Or if you want it in series, wired the same as the pickup selector switch, you could take a Dremel to a dual-gang linear pot, and buff the clockwise end off one track and the anticlockwise end off the other. Connect one pickup to each "unbuffed" end, then connect the two wipers together and take your output from there. The only difference between this and the previous hook-up is that you're cutting off the unused ends of the tracks, instead of grounding them.

I have a McCarty too, and one of my favourite tones is both pickups together in single-coil mode. The output is pretty low, but I find that useful, I can switch it back to humbucking to get a solo boost.

[Blues Sr.]

Yeah, I love the singles. I actually put two push-pull pots in the tone and volume knobs so that they work independently. There are some very cool tones in there. I dont have the original PRS pickups, and the humbuckers are not really special, so I find myself using the singles more often than not.