Recently bought another one of these on sale and wanted to see what would happen by changing out the electronics. My goal was to try to find the best combo of pots/capicitors to use with the stock pickups. I recorded the bass with stock electronics, then replaced with a CTS250k(audio) volume pot and a bourns 500K (audio) tone pot. I tried both a .068 capacitor and a .047 with this set up. Then changed out the pots for a CTS250k audio pot for both volume and tone and tried the same value capacitors. The jack is a pure tone. I used a stage 800 fender amp with a usb connected to a Mac and used garage band. EQ settings in GarageBand were all set to the middle and compression was set to 0. I also recorded with stock strings.
I apologize in advance for my playing. I did the best I could, there’s some string noise and a few missed notes, but I think you can get a good idea what each combo sounds like. I tried to play mostly the same line with the tone set at 0/50/100. If the YouTube previews don’t work they are in that order below. What do you think? Which combo is your favorite?
This was pretty fun to do. I was surprised at the different sounds that could be had from the stock pickups. I think the difference between the 250k .047 and the stock sound (also 250 .047 but cheaper components) is enough to say that it’s definitely worth making the effort to change the electronics in these inexpensive basses.
I can also see why most p basses seem to have that 250k .047 set up. I think it’s in that just right range for most people. I think my personal preference is either 500k/.047 or 250k .068. But, I think they all have a sound that might be appropriate in a particular situation.
This is kind of classic. A lot of vintage bass re-issues, like the Telecaster bass, come with 500/.05. Though the difference between .047 and .05 is negligible. When the bass was invented, it came with .1 or .05 caps as that was what a strat used. There wasn’t a standard setup until like 56 or 57.
I have 500/.05 on my Bronco and it sounds great, really classic tone.
Is that the one with the Fralin 51p? Mine has a 250k tone pot but I put a .022 cap in it. I’m thinking I will change it. It’s a different sound but I don’t think it’s for me. I have the control harness (500k/.047) from this exercise that I was thinking of putting in it.
I’m a filter geek and the primary reason I think I like the combo of the 500kohm/.068uF is that it is plenty bright wide open but the larger cap gives it a nice depth to the filter effect, present even wide open, while the 500k pot gives a lot of range to rolling it in.
I may try this combo sometime, sounded great to me
I personally didn’t really like the 500k wide open but in theory there’s actually nothing to lose in using 500k tone pots. Might be a bit more noisy but since the pot is wired in series with the cap you can always just turn it down and still get the same result. Why I asked is that if the pots were linear and you had the 500k @ 50% it should sound the same as 250k wide open. 0% will always be just the cap on it’s own.
E: If you want to try getting the 250k wide open sound with a 500k pot then rolling it back 10-30% would do it. Depending on the actual taper of the pot.
Im pretty new to all this, but my understanding is that the higher value pots allow for more highs to come through for a given capacitor. As. far as a capacitor, the lower the value the more highs get through. At least that’s the way Ive been thinking. I see your point about the audio/log taper pots. A 50% knob setting might not be a true 50% value. Ive heard of some people using linear pots for tone and I can see why that would be a choice.
I don’t think linear pots for tone is a way to go. Keep to the log ones. Easier to dial in your tone. Why I got to thinking about it and asked you is just because of what I heard in the recordings.
If you don’t have noise or other issues with the 500k then keep it. All your 250k tones are still in there with the additional bit of peaking response. There’s really nothing to lose. All this actually got me a bit curious and I might try some simulations later today or whenever I will get to it.
This is correct. The filter cutoff is determined by both the capacitor and the resistor. If you’re interested in the math, here’s an easy tutorial using a similar first-order RC filter as a bass tone control that explains it nicely:
I like this one because it also touches on the phase shift as well.
I agree here too as the log pot will sound and act more linear musically while the linear pot will do very little to the tone for much of the range and be very sensitive over a small portion.
