Non linear pots on telecaster

[Quilly]

Just doing a small repair of a jack output socket for a friend on his tele (sorted) and I noticed that the volume and tone pots , while working fine, only really seem to engage in the last few increments , like between 8 -10 ish ? Is that normal . It’s a 20-30 year old fender telecaster (USA) 

[Hellzero]

Hélas, it's totally normal on Fender instruments and and an usual complaint.

 

You could try some linear taper pots instead logarithmic (aka audio) as it will work (a bit) better for your needs or try some very tight tolerance models, which are expensive.

 

Remember that whatever people say CTS or CRL or whatever with a carbon (resistive) track are cheapos things will 30% tolerance or even higher, so not precise at all!

[Quilly]

4 hours ago, Hellzero said:

Hélas, it's totally normal on Fender instruments and and an usual complaint.

 

You could try some linear taper pots instead logarithmic (aka audio) as it will work (a bit) better for your needs or try some very tight tolerance models, which are expensive.

 

Remember that whatever people say CTS or CRL or whatever with a carbon (resistive) track are cheapos things will 30% tolerance or even higher, so not precise at all!

That's fine, its not my guitar and and as it seems to be a normal phenomenon for fender electric guitars i'll leave its alone.  

[Chienmortbb]

The received wisdom seems to be that guitars & basses use linear pots, despite the fact that our hearing is logarithmically responsive to sound. The reason is that the pots are not used as potential dividers. However, I put in some DiMarzio pickups into my bass a few years ago and saw that the DiMarzio wiring diagrams used logarithmic pots. After a long conversation over a few weeks with DiMarzio Tech Support, I wired it as instructed and found that volume and tone worked well with adjustment at all around the rotation of the pots. 

 

I have since used that same circuits on about 8 basses with the same results.