[ringKing72]

We're gonna test-fire the other taper pot and see how it works. As of now my tone pot twists like 90% of the way without doing anything, then goes from treble to bass like a light switch. Is this how other guys tone pot(s) work?
.

HI Pete, yes, that's exactly how the tone knob behaves for my Wolf. I got my guitar last week and thought the tone knob was broken. That's what got me off on this 'Potentiometer of Galadriel' kick. LOL I wanted 'see' what was going on. Several others throughout the forum have reported the same thing.

[Dozin]

If you watch video of Jerry playing wolf every time he goes to lead he turns the fwd tone knob. Treats it like a rhythm / lead switch.

[Pete B.]

I like to test out different stuff and see how it works.
fwiw, I regularly look in the mirror and say...
Son, I know Jerry Garcia, and you're no Jerry Garcia.
'Helps me keep my shit straight with regard to my interest in Mods, and, you know... Clammin' out on every fucking solo I/you take... etc...

[mgbills]

Hey Pete,
I'm actually digging the 1M Ohm idea. You can always shave the ice-pics at the amp.

Thoughts?

[tigerstrat]

I like to test out different stuff and see how it works.
fwiw, I regularly look in the mirror and say...
Son, I know Jerry Garcia, and you're no Jerry Garcia.
'Helps me keep my shit straight with regard to my interest in Mods, and, you know... Clammin' out on every fucking solo I/you take... etc...

Yet another missing chapter that Peter Jackson excised from LotR: The Mirror Of PeteB.-driel

All Tolkien dorkery aside (I could do this until next month ), my tone control does have a fairly narrow useful range. 500k audio taper+orange drop 715 .02uF. Seems to me like it takes roughly half of the rotation, before being at maximum brightness. My go-to sweet spot is somewhere in the first 15-20% of the rotation. I am pretty used to it though, no complaint.

[ringKing72]

All Tolkien dorkery aside (I could do this until next month ), my tone control does have a fairly narrow useful range. 500k audio taper+orange drop 715 .02uF. Seems to me like it takes roughly half of the rotation, before being at maximum brightness. My go-to sweet spot is somewhere in the first 15-20% of the rotation.

That's more taper than most. I also have a 500K taper with .02uF cap. I've heard some have 30% taper, but mine's more like10%. Is your (middle) POT different than that specified in the Wolf schematic http://dozin.com/jers/guitars/wolf/schematic.htm? So I'm trying to reconcile why some folks have more/less taper than others. Even with Super IIn RLC tolerance will not have much on the taper. That pretty much leaves the tolerance of the POT, which is +/-10% for 504A mil-spec, which could explains the diffence between having a10% taper and 30% taper. Still, 10% to 50% is bigger jump, the 504B pot could further bridge the gap, but that's not what's specified in the Wolf schematic.

500K POT datasheet: http://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20She ... %20RV4.pdf

[mgbills]

The places I've seen variances are caps...which I just gained the ability to check. 8 out of 10 in my stock pile came out more than 30% off spec. The 0.22's measure more like 0.34.

The dual-gang mil-spec pot in Pete's guitar has the tightest spec I've ever seen. That puppy is a 500k pot on both pots. It's hard to imagine you could rotate those buggers to exactly 1/2 and re-read, but it's super tight tolerance. Ohmite NOS from Scarletfire.

But it's annoying to Pete as a player. It tough to turn on the fly. No problem to me, as I'm just a hard working sucky player...but to somebody who can flip 3 toggles, adjust a volume pedal, turn on a Mutron III and an Octave divider...and make a tone adjustment (I've seen him do it)...without missing a beat while singing....it's annoying.

And yet...his guitar has less taper than my almost identically modded Strat with an Alpha dual-gang. I've not measured the cap or taper of the pot in my guitar. I couldn't have measure the cap as I didn't have the instrument yet...and I just didn't bother with the pot.

I say caps if I had to guess. But I'm no expert.

[mgbills]

Also...Pete's guitar seems to be the brightest I've built. Very clean and treble-y. But with the problematic roll-off...

To be clear, Pete's guitar was built as a Master-Tone Tiger with the neck & Bridge sharing a 500k pot. With the re-arrangement of the pickups, this also cleaned up the neck pickup and made it more defined. Nice mod if we can get the tone knob right.

I should really post the pics of that job. I've been meaning to for 2 months.
Peace
M

[ringKing72]

(w/ corrected values)

I ran sims using different tolerances for the tone cap. What I saw was that cap tolerance had an effect on the absolute tone, but not really on relative tone (ie. the rate of change of the filter roll-off when sweeping the tone knob). A 30% high cap will shift the resonant peak by the same amount, but seemed to have little, if any, on how fast the filter rolls off with a turn of the tone knob. This is all theoretical though. The tone could very well be that sensitive to tone capacitance tolerance.

I''d like to veryify the Super II RLC values I've been using. Does anyone out there knows the L & C (and or resonant frequency) values for the Super II in either humbucker or split-coil mode?? I found an R = 8700ohm for the Super II on the Dimarzio's website. I'm assuming that is in humbucker mode. Seeing that Jerry played split-coil mostly, I divided the R in half to get 4350ohms for split-coil. I've been using 2H and 77pF (assuming split-coil), respectively. Just curious if this L & C is close.