Precision pickup replacement

[skej21]

Just fitting some new pickups in a student's precision. She's upgrading from the stock pups to Fender Original precision pups but wants to have 500k CTS pots.

I don't know much about pots other than my Precision pups are 250k as are the stock ones on her bass at the moment. Will it be okay/worth it to upgrade to 500k pots?

Any help (or links to related topics) will be greatly appreciated. Also an explanation that I can use to talk her out of it if it's not worth it would be helpful too!

Thanks in advance

Edited June 8, 2012 by skej21

[ikay]

Here's an extract from www.guitarelectronics.com (the same applies for bass guitars):

[size=4][font=Arial]"Either 250K or 500K pots can be used with any passive pickups however the pot values will affect tone slightly. The rule is: Using higher value pots (500K) will give the guitar a brighter sound and lower value pots (250K) will give the guitar a slightly warmer sound. This is because higher value pots put less of a load on the pickups which prevents treble frequencies from "bleeding" to ground through the pot and being lost. For this reason, guitars with humbuckers like Les Pauls use 500K pots to retain more highs for a slightly brighter tone and guitars with single coils like Stratocasters and Telecasters use 250K pots to add some warmth by slightly reducing the highs. You can also fine tune the sound by changing the pot values regardless of what pot value the guitar originally had.[/font]"[/size]

[size=4]Also this from Talkbass, specifically about putting 500k pots in a Precisioon::[/size]

[size=4]"[/size]500ks will make for a loud, bright, grindy sound, while 250ks will be more old-school."

So I guess it depends what she's after...

Edited June 8, 2012 by ikay

[skej21]

That's all I needed. Thanks Shes after a trebly tone as she plays punk and wants that bright, scratchy attack/tone... 500k pots it is

[iiipopes]

This is a little late, but while she's at it, in addition, she might consider changing out the tone cap as well from .047 or .1 to a .033 in order to get a little more grind that way as well.

And if she ever wants to go back to "old school" tone, she won't have to change out the pots, just wire a 500kohm resistor over the outside two lugs and it will effectively lower the overall resistance back to 250kohms. The drawback is that if she uses audio taper pots, she will have a slightly different "ramp" through the range.