Thanks, George! I know the generalities but am very interested in specifics like this. The rule of thumb is there because it generally works well, but it’s not the last word on things!
I’m thinking I need to start using connectors for connecting bass guts. Which ones are you using?
For anyone curious about pot innards and such, check out
The Secret Life of Pots (The Secret Life of Pots). R.G. Knows his stuff.
I don’t typically use connectors for my bass wiring unless the parts I buy come with a pre wired harness (i.e. EMG). Nothing against them, I just never really went down that path. I suppose they work just fine, but I like the peace of mind that a hard solder offers vs a connector that could possibly jiggle loose or cause intermittent problems.
On my bass builds I use a small plank of thin wood with holes drilled in it that match the control layout. I wire and solder everything up external to the bass (except output jack, bridge ground, caps and pickups). Then I alligator clip the pickups and jack leads in place and test the tone with a range of caps to see what works best for that bass. Once I find what I like I install the controls in the bass and solder the caps in place along with the pickups, bridge ground wire and output jack.
I’ve found over time that I have very few pickups that I’m using that sound good with 1meg or 250K volume pots (Stingray and Jazz pickups kind of fall in those ranges but I use very very few of those). As for tone pots, it’s a toss up on 500k and 250k, I almost always use one or the other on my builds, don’t think I’ve ever found a need to use a 1meg pot for tone. Caps are where all the trial and error occurs for me, so I rarely ever solder those in place without playing “what if” with about a dozen different caps.
At one point I considered building a switchboard that I could clamp my pickup leads into and then switch between three or four different volume pot values, and three or four different tone pot values for each pickup and four or five different tone caps. It’s pretty easy to do, but as Chuck noted, what happens when you’ve switched thru the options to find what you want only to find out it sounds different when you wire it all up and install it in the bass. There’s a lot of tolerance on each pot and cap that can all add up, and that alone could make the difference between a ho-hum sound and a stellar sound. So I always install the actual pots and caps I’ve tested in the bass.
Speaking of tolerances, Note the as tested values on these Alpha pots…
There’s almost a 20% difference in the high and low volume pots even though they are rated at 500k ohms. Thats some pretty hefty slop.
