Shobud volume pedal help

[jlatrace]

I recently purchased a vintage Shobud volume pedal to use as a volume pedal for my guitar rig. It has a 500K pot but it only registers 16K when all the way up (which means my guitar never reaches full volume).

I'm not sure whether this is a fixable problem or not. Any suggestions about where to start?

[Mark Hammer]

Are you measuring it with your instrument plugged in, or with just the bare pedal? If you have something plugged in, even with the pot at max resistance/volume, what you measure will be the combined parallel resistance of the volume pot in the pedal plus the guitar/source.

[jlatrace]

Easy fix. Open the back up and visually check the rotation of the POT (which could be your issue). Also look inside at the tip and back to see if there are rubber stoppers. If so, remove them which will give you a much fuller throw.
If everything is OK there, you need to change the POT. If you play humbucker guitars, I strongly recommend a 1 meg pot. You will need a long shaft POT (NEC is good, old Ohmite, old Allen Bradley, Dunlop (if you can find 1M), a wrench, and a soldering iron.

Be sure to note how the string is affixed to the pot because you will need to detach and reattach the string to take the pedal apart and put it back together. There is good help here (pics and a video):

Goodrich 120 Pot