Upgrading Electronics
There’s far more to a guitar’s electronics than pickups. Potentiometers can have a huge impact on your guitar’s sound and capabilities. Most entry level guitars will use cheaper “dime-sized” pots (potentiometers), which are usually not as accurate as the full-sized pots. They also may not taper as evenly – i.e. you may find that when you turn your volume or tone down, nothing much happens and then all of a sudden there’s a massive drop off. Most higher end guitars use CTS pots, because of their build quality and reliability. Not only will they taper more smoothly, but they may add more clarity to your sound, because their superior construction causes less treble loss. The most common values for potentiometers are 250k and 500k. All you need to know is that the higher the value, the brighter your instrument will sound. This is why single coil guitars use 250k pots and humbucker guitars use 500k. Changing pot values is a very inexpensive way to change your tone. Perhaps your humbucker guitar sounds a bit dark and muddy? Try 550k pots, or your single coil guitar is brighter than you want? How about 220k.
You may have come across the term “push-pull” or “coil-split”. You can but push-pull pots to which you can wire to give you the option to split and humbucker pickup. So when you pull your tone knob up, it kills the signal from one of the 2 humbucker coils, which turns it into a single coil. They you can push it back down to return it to a full humbucker, making your instrument far more versatile.
At Andertons we also sell wiring kits so you can upgrade all your electronics at once. These include specific kits such as the Stratocaster Mid Boost kit, used by Eric Clapton, to really customise your instrument and make it unique.
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