Strat tone pots

W

waylander69

Inspired
So I have strat question, the 2 tone pots I believe are assoc with 2 different pups depending on the selector switch especially position 2 & 4 bridge & mid or mid and neck how much do strat owners use the 2 different tone pots to balance the sound , I realise possible once set you may just leave them but do people have them offset or set roughly the same ?
I ask this because I have a PRS EG which only has 1 tone pot and I'm not quite getting the tone I want from position 4
Cheers
G \../
 
You may get a ton of replies on this.
All my strats have 1 volume and 1 tone. I use a special cap & resistor treble bleed on the tone pot.
I use special taper pots too.
 
My Strat has the Clapton Active Electronics on it which includes a Mid-Boost instead of a Second Tone Pot. This makes it real easy to go from typical Strat tones to more of a Humbucker sound. The only downside is it requires an onboard 9 volt battery (I have the battery in the backplate so I can easily replace it).
 
You can't balance two tone settings on a strat with standard wiring . It just defaults to the one turned down the most. Original Strat wiring was not designed to even have two pickups on together.
 
One thought I had was to buy a new wiring loom with pots and switch to attach pups too , but the choice is vast and I've been more of a humbucker man with my other guitars. So am royally looking for guidance from the forum 😉
 
SE or old USA? Pots will affect the overall brightness and taper and the cap will be the quality of the roll off . A CTS audio pot and a decent high voltage cap will give you the best possible with the other components .
 
The EG is an SE trem model I picked up a couple of years ago I then put a Seymour Duncan ssl 5 in the bridge which improved the gilmour tone in position 2.
However recently been playing a bit chicago blues and slow blues as part of my guitar learning program and the neck or pos 4 didn't make me smile as much as I'd have liked .
Rather than just buy another guitar I thought a little mod might help
 
Note that with a normal 5-way, even 2 tone controls won't get you one just for the bridge pu when it's on by itself, which is what you need IMO.
You need a fancier switch for that.
 
Without routing you have room for up to six pots, really, if you use dual concentric pots. I'm a big fan having individual volume and tone control for each pickup. I say, why not? As for switching, virtually anything you imagine is possible, and if you have trouble coming up with a diagram, the Guitar Nuts 2 forum is pretty much dedicated to that kind of stuff!
 
I get a good quack with splits on my humbucks (inner bridge / outer coil), and I do use my individual volume and tone controls to dial it in just right; to me it's totally worth it, but I'm a control freak on my control panel. :)
 
Came close to buying a cs69 or a 59 vintage , couldn't decide whether to put in neck or bridge, and couldn't decide if I was aiming to improve gilmour sound or go blues ,
So you could say I'm undecided
To be honest I have a prs c22 which has an awesome tone in neck position with coil tap activated that I've been using more than the prs eg , I did wonder whether I should be just experimenting more with amp settings with the prs eg to see what tones I could achieve rather than chasing new pups
So the ideas parked / stalled St present but if there's any experience or words of wisdom I'm all ears
Cheers
G \../
 
I honestly don't use either tone knob on my strats. I had one of them wired to have the middle pickup tone be a blender pot to blend the neck and bridge pickups in position 1 and 5 on the switch. The other tone was wired to a master tone. I rarely touched that knob. I also dislike the standard cap they use on their tone controls. They are too high of a value for me. I like them to be .022 or .015. The values that are typically used just sound like a heavy blanket thrown over my speaker cabinet.

I a few HSS guitars that just have one tone on them like your PRS. I find that to be adequate for me. I still rarely use them. I tend to select the pickup position for what I want and then use the volume knob to get where I want to be. Where this differs for me is a guitar that has two volume and two tone knobs like a Les Paul or PRS 594. I have a couple of Les Pauls that I like to run the tone on the bridge pickup around 7.
 
waylander69 said:
if there's any experience or words of wisdom I'm all ears
Click to expand...

I don't own a strat right now...kind of fell out of love with them, but one was my only guitar for like a decade.

I used the tone controls all the time, as well as a variety of different wiring options.

The version it had the longest was a single ToneStyler and a master tone control. Basically, the tonestyler swaps in different caps and then the other tone knob works as a tone knob but with the selected cap. It did a good job of sounding warmer without ever really sounding underwater.

I pretty much never like bridge pickups with the tone all the way up...they're way too bright/brittle for me, especially on a Fender. If I do what I need to do to the amp to make the bridge pickup sound good, the neck becomes unusable. But, that's all preference. At some point, I started using taper resistors in parallel with the bridge tone pot to limit it and change the curve (e.g., 10 on the knob is like it's on 5 without the resistor, and the taper winds up smoother).

If I were wiring a relatively normal strat today, I'd probably go with Clapton wiring, 3-way switch, and replace the absolutely horrendous TBX with a normal tone control.
 
marsonic said:
I don't own a strat right now...kind of fell out of love with them, but one was my only guitar for like a decade.

I used the tone controls all the time, as well as a variety of different wiring options.

The version it had the longest was a single ToneStyler and a master tone control. Basically, the tonestyler swaps in different caps and then the other tone knob works as a tone knob but with the selected cap. It did a good job of sounding warmer without ever really sounding underwater.

I pretty much never like bridge pickups with the tone all the way up...they're way too bright/brittle for me, especially on a Fender. If I do what I need to do to the amp to make the bridge pickup sound good, the neck becomes unusable. But, that's all preference. At some point, I started using taper resistors in parallel with the bridge tone pot to limit it and change the curve (e.g., 10 on the knob is like it's on 5 without the resistor, and the taper winds up smoother).

If I were wiring a relatively normal strat today, I'd probably go with Clapton wiring, 3-way switch, and replace the absolutely horrendous TBX with a normal tone control.
Click to expand...
Why swap out a tone cap when all you need is one good one and actually use it. Why a 3 way? and do you mean that horrendous boost.
 
Andy Eagle said:
Why swap out a tone cap when all you need is one good one and actually use it. Why a 3 way? and do you mean that horrendous boost.
Click to expand...
I don't think I understand the first question. I liked the ToneStyler for a long time because you could make it sound rather dark without ever sounding underwater or totally gone.

I never liked the in-between positions. So, that plus stubbornness.
The TBX control isn't the boost. It's a different tone circuit that I absolutely hate. As far as I'm concerned, it's the same as a normal tone control with much less travel on the knob.
 
So I've got an update , had a rush of blood to my head and splashed out on a tex / mex pup ( £30 ), waiting on word on whether I get a cs69 pup off ebay or another American strat pup @ 6.8 ohms off ebay , since I'm experimenting not prepared to splash too much cash hence considering the unknown fender model, resistance is what makes me think it could be interesting @ £30 half the price of cs69
I'm going to worry about wiring configuration later.
Anybody got any thoughts as these pups are going to partner a Seymour ssl-5, hoping to get lucky an get a better blues tone on the neck and better floyd tone in position 2

Cheers
G \../
 
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