So when I first put my Angelicaster together I bought a bulk bag of potentiometers and measured every one to make sure I got the ones closest to 250K. I managed to get three that measured 250K exactly on my multimeter and I used those.
Now they've been wired up for a few months, but my new pickups are arriving today so I pulled the pickguard off and did a few tests, without removing any of the wiring... now the multimeter reads about 235K for each pot! What the heck is going on? Do potentiometers lose resistance over time? Or is my multimeter not performing consistently? Could the fact that they're now wired up to the rest of the guitar have something to do with it?