Shared volume control, different impedance

[JaminJuno]

I'm about to wire up a project jazzmaster using two pickups that require different value volume pots, 1k for the neck and 250meg for the bridge. I would like to stick with only having one master volume control if possible. Can I wire a resistor between the bridge pickup and the volume control and use a 1k pot? What value would I use? Many thanks!

 

[walterw]

wait, you mean 1Meg and 250k, right?

what kind of pickups are we talking about?

anyway, use a 1M volume, then put a resistor close to 333k from the pickup needing the 250k's hot right to ground.

the one pickup and the combination will see a 250k load, while the other pickup by itself just sees the 1M volume pot.

also, "require" might be overstating it; you could very well find that they both sound good just using a 500k volume.

 

[David Collins]

...also, "require" might be overstating it; you could very well find that they both sound good just using a 500k volume.

+1. There really is no "required" value for any pickup within a reasonable range. A better view may be "is most commonly preferred with", as it really amounts to no more than this - common preferences. As Walter suggested, it's not a bad idea to start with one value an see how you like it. Then if you want one brighter or the other a bit less so, tweak the values from there by loading resistors across in certain positions.

 

[JaminJuno]

Whoops! Brain snap. I did indeed mean a 1meg and a 250k pot. I'm planning on a Telenator WRHB in the neck position. They specifically suggest using a 1meg to retain the high end and I'm using a G&L Jumbo MFD in the bridge position which is a very bright sounding pickup. I think it would be a little too harsh without a little high end roll off.

 

[walterw]

at least that G&L pickup should reasonably hang volume-wise.

yeah, their idea is lower-wound steel-pole pickups for clarity and decent loudness; it might be OK with 500k all around, but i wouldn't be surprised if you really did prefer the 1M/250k idea.

you could also wire the tone control to the bridge pickup only; a 500k volume by itself should be essentially equal to a typical widerange or jazzmaster 1M vol+1M tone combo when all the way up, and if you had a 250k tone that only hit the bridge pickup it would get you somewhere closer to the zone of 250k vol + 250k tone "regular fender" sound.

(nobody cares, but this kind of stuff is why i don't like mixing pickup types or even coil-splitting or series-parallel on my guitars; i want all the pickup options to balance volume-wise with each other, and to behave the same with the volume and tone controls.)

 

[JaminJuno]

Thanks for the advice Walter. Hadn't considered only wiring the bridge to the tone but that's an excellent idea. Might be just the solution I'm looking for.