Bypassing pots - experiences?

[djetz]

(I posted this on the pickup forum, before I found this one. Sorry.)

The main guitar I'm using at the moment is a Godin Radiator, but I am in the process of buying a strat clone, which I will be using as my main guitar.

I was thinking of bypassing all the pots and wiring the pickups direct to the switch and the switch direct to the output. I never use the things: I have a volume pedal and I'd much rather use the AMP pots to adjust tone.

HOWEVER, reading stuff online has got me spooked, a little. I've done this in the past, and noticed what I felt to be an improvement in sound. But that was some time ago, back in the days I was using humbuckers and distortion/overdrive. In the last few years, my sound has cleaned up considerably.

So - getting to the point: does bypassing the pots change the sound in any negative way, considering I never use them anyway? I understand that changing from a 250K pot to a 500k one will change the sound a little, so I'm assuming that the reason is that even with the pots on full there is a little "bleeding" of the signal. I would expect a slight loss of top end.

Can anyone comment on this, or will I just have to experiment and see what I like? I'm thinking I'll just do it and if the guitar sounds shrill, I'll reconnect them.

I like top end, I like a crisp sound. I like to cut through the mix rather than create a wall of sound. Any comments appreciated.

[Teleologist]

Check out the link below - scroll down to the section titled Potentiometer Values. The Figure1 link shows what happens to the peak frequencies with different loads on a single coil PUP. Figure 2 is for a humbucker.

http://www.seymourduncan.com/website...techtips.shtml

If you bypass everything and use a volume pedal as the first thing in the FX chain, you'll be running the guitar into whatever the pot value or input impedence is in the volume pedal(probably 1meg). If you don't use it for other guitars, you could mod the pedal to have whatever load you wanted. An alternative is to wire a fixed resistor(250K, 300K, 500K, or ??? for whatever load you want) inside the guitar across the hot output and ground.

Fender '52 RI Teles come with a 'modern' wiring upgrade kit that includes a 1meg volume pot as used on post '67 Teles. Most people rewire the switch and leave it at that, but those who install the pot almost always switch back to the 250K fast - icepick city and that's with a bridge PUP wound to 7K(hot by Strat standards). Unless you're running really hot PUPs or a humbucker, the last thing most Strats need is more top-end.

If you want to try it bypassed without too much fuss, just lift the ground connection on the 3rd terminal of the volume pot, disconnect 1 end of the tone cap, and turn the volume pot full up.

[djetz]

Thanks a lot for the tip, I'll check it out. I'll probably end up just trying it out and seeing if I like the sound. Thanks again.