What's up, buddy!defendyachtrock wrote: Thu May 09, 2024 2:48 pm Since I’m back on the forum, I feel like I might as well ask something I got a question on a guitar I recently swapped pickups on.
I recently swapped pickups on one of my guitars to a set of GFS Surf 90s (their version of a DeArmond single-coil). They sound good and preeeetty close to the Jumbo MFDs on my G&L ASAT Special (currently my number one), but the MFDs still sound a touch brighter.
The pots in the guitar are 250k for both volume and tone.
Two questions here:
1. Would switching to 330k pots get me just *slightly* brighter on the Surf 90s? If it’s gonna be too trebly or not have an appreciable effect I’d prefer to not do the swap.
2. If I do decide to swap, is it necessary to only do the tone pot or should I swap the volume pot as well?
This may be a lot of words to end up with “you won’t know until you try” but I figured to ask in case someone’s had experience here. (Of course, I played a gig last night and didn’t feel too much of a difference switching between the guitars, so there ya go…)
Here's an easy test. Disconnect the tone pot. Play the two guitars. See if Surf 90s sound as bright. If it gets you there with no tone pot, then I'd put in a 500k no-load tone pot. If it doesn't get you there, then replace both the volume and tone with 500k pots.
Finally, are the strings the same ages on the guitars. There have been so many times when I have been disappointed with a guitar and I started looking at pickup replacements. Then I realized that I'd not changed strings for a while. I changed my strings and my guitar came back to life. The pickups and everything were fine, but the strings were just old.
Cheers, sir!
