mustang pickups/control mod

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thompsdb
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mustang pickups/control mod

Post by thompsdb » Mon Apr 19, 2021 1:38 pm

I bought a MIJ mustang MG69 MH, circa 2001 mfg, from Japan recently, my first short-scale git, I love it! Curious of what controls were in it, I opened it up and found 2 mini pots, 250K "A" taper logarithmic (tone) pots - 2 tone pots!. Anyone know if that is the stock configuration? I didn't see any evidence of the phillips head screws having any wear from wrenching on them or anything, and the right amount of sawdust and stuck-togetherness was present when I removed the control plate. The git seemed to play ok with this configuration.

I wanted more out of the electronics so I planned out my mods: lindy fralin hots (the set) pickups, and at fralin's reccomendation 500K pots and an .022 oip cap. So - since I saw 2 tone pots in there at first, I replaced with 2, 500k TONE pots. I did not put a treble bleed kit on the "volume" pot. The git certainly sizzles with this configuration yeeeeowwww....

I'm noticing that as I reduce the "volume" pot, the useable knob rotation range is about 180 to210 degrees or so wide open to all the way off. As I roll vol knob towards off, I don't hear any muddiness that I might have put a treble bleed kit in to prevent, muddiness doesn't seem to be there.

All the in-phase, out-of-phase switches and everything work as they should, mustang certainly has a wide range of possibilities.

So: anyone know why there might have been 2 tone pots in stock form? Any advantage or disadvantage to this? Should I keep 2 tone(A, log) pots instead of 1 linear/1logarithmic or change to linear/logarithmic? Opinions about Fralin's suggestion of 500K pots? .022 cap? Opinion about why vol control knob only effects vol range with partial rotation of knob? Corrective action for this? Your favorite combination?

dougie

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HarlowTheFish
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Re: mustang pickups/control mod

Post by HarlowTheFish » Mon Apr 19, 2021 2:42 pm

Log pots for volume is pretty common, to be honest, it's not a tone vs. volume thing -- it's just a way of describing whether the resistance increases linearly or logarithmically. Linear is nice when you're fully clean, but can be a bit of an on/off switch with lots of gain or compression, while linear is nice for more compressed tones and for swells, but can make riding the line between distorted and clean with your volume a bit fiddly.

Switch them if you like lin/log instead of log/log, but there's no right answer there. 500K is a decent value for a darker pickup, but might be too much with a brighter one -- though keep in mind you can always roll the tone down for practically the same result. Speaking of tone, 0.022 I think is an okay value but I don't have much use for the lower third. I've been playing with 0.010 and 0.015 and the 0.010 has gotten to the point where I'm actually using the entire sweep of it.
thompsdb wrote:
Mon Apr 19, 2021 1:38 pm
Opinion about why vol control knob only effects vol range with partial rotation of knob? Corrective action for this?
What do you mean by this? If it's about the taper difference, where you rotate the same amount but there's more output on a linear pot, that's just what the difference is.
thompsdb wrote:
Mon Apr 19, 2021 1:38 pm
Your favorite combination?
Really depends on the guitar, pickup, use case, and preference. My Mustang has 2xA250K with a 0.010 tone cap, my in-progress build has 2xA1M with a treble bleed and 0.015 cap, plus a C1M bass cut, and my Ibby and ESP are both getting 1xB1M vol, 1xA1M tone with 0.010 tone cap when I get around redoing the electronics on those.

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