New Tone control idea: varying the resistance of the volume pot

[Louisa M.]

all right, how `bout this: is there a way to vary the resistance of the volume pot? I`ve read on Chris Kinman`s website and elsewhere that a higher pot (resistance) value will add more presence and attack and change the Q and stuff, so would it be possible to, say, use the second tone pot to vary the resistance of the volume pot, therefore acting more like a presence/attack control? I think that this could be quite useful, I just don`t know how one would wire this up. maybe use a 250K volume pot, and add a 1meg ``presence`` pot in series with the signal, so that when the presence control is at `0`, the volume would be a regular 250k for that smooth strat sound, but with the presence turned up full you`d have 1250k altogether, which would basically be no-load. And of course you could go anywhere in between.

Could this work, and how would you wire it?

Or, would the same effect be acheived by just using a 1meg volume pot and turning it down a bit to achieve a 250k sound?

[Teleologist]

Adding resistance in series won't work because the wiper of the main volume pot won't be able to use it. If you added 500K before a 500K volume pot, the effect would be like a 1 meg volume pot that only went from 0-5. If you added it between the volume pot and ground, you'd have a 1 meg pot that only works from 6-10 and wouldn't completely turn off.

Some of the Fender neck-bucker Teles use a 500K pot with a 270K fixed resistor wired in parallel at the switch for the bridge PUP-only position. This is like having a 500K pot for the positions where the bucker is used and ~200K for the bridge PUP alone. Check out the schematic for the US Fat Tele on the Mr. Gearhead site. You couldn't substitute a pot though - turning it all the way off would kill everything - maybe a pot/resistor combination would work but you'd have to experiment to find useful values.

[Louisa M.]

okay, I think I`ve got it. I would wire this `presence` pot just like a tone pot, ie parallel with the pickups, but with a resistor instead of a capacitor. The hard part will be finding the right pot and resistor values. Sound good? I`ve always wondered what would happen when you wire a tone pot with a resistor instead of a cap

[LightninBoy]

This might be off subject a little, but I wanted to chime in with a little info in reference to using resistors with the volume pot. I recently installed some Vintage Noiseless Fender pups, and on the volume pot (500K) the diagram specified wiring in a 220K resistor in parallel with a 680pf capacitor - doing this allows me to turn my volume all the way down to '1' without the volume dropping out completely - I had been wondering how to do this since some of my other guitars had been dropping out completely right around '5' which I couldn't figure out. I wired up my other Strats (250K pots) the same way and they're working out just as well. I actually prefer the 250K pots myself, I like to make my adjustments in small increments and don't seem to hear as much of a change when I make adjustments on the 500K pots. If anyone has any other recommendations for caps or resistors that help in this regard I would welcome any advice - I'm having a blast with my soldering iron these days