JM Caps & Pots

[prscrptn]

I just had my J.Mascis JM rewired with an All Parts Kit and not sure if the job was done correctly... the Volume and Tone seem to roll off to the point of being useless.

I'm wondering if the pots were installed incorrectly, (perhaps Audio taper on the Tone and Linear taper on the Volume), or if this is just typical Jazzmaster issue?

Maybe there's something I'm missing that can be done to make controls more useful? The All Parts pots included are 1-Meg Split Linear & 1-Meg CTS Audio.

I've also swapped out the pick-ups for Antiquity 1's but don't think that should make a difference, perhaps different capacitors would help the curve?

The All Parts supplied capacitors are .033 MFD and .020 MFD which match the Fender wiring diagram, so I'm not quite sure what's going on...

[weatherking]

The first thing I suggest is swapping the bridge and tone pots. I had the same problem with a Tele I put together and I guess I had the linear and audio taper pots in the wrong positions. It sounds fine now. Looking at some wiring diagrams on Google, the volume should be linear and the tone should be audio taper, as you mentioned.

[prscrptn]

Definitely going to give this a try, some people have suggested using Linear pots for the Volume will give more even taper.

I may try Emerson CTS Pots to see if this improves things but starting to wonder how capacitor values could impact these.

Trial/Error may be the best option, just hate to re-wire so many times, any ideas or verified configurations are welcome!

[JVG]

There have been numerous debates about linear v audio taper pots. In theory, audio taper should give a better result for volume pots, as their response is based on a logarithmic curve (hence the name audio taper). Some people agree, some don't.

As for caps, the value of the cap doesn't matter when the tone is on "full", so in that regard the cap value doesn't influence the pot. When the tone is rolled off, I've found 0.033 caps most useful for single coil pickups. 0.047 roll off too much treble for my taste, and 0.022 not enough. But again, it all comes down to personal preference. Changing caps is one of the simpler mods you can make, so don't overthink it. You can easily change later!

J.

[prscrptn]

Problems resolved, a wiring diagram showed me pots were wired incorrectly.

I learned typical Jazzmaster wiring uses linear on volume and audio for tone.

I also installed orange drops on both tone control & everything works great!

Thanks again for all of the input, advice, and help from offset members.