Warmoth Telecaster

paul-e-mann said:
Squier has so many nice Teles, just buy one and tweak from there. I have the stock pickups in my Squier CV Tele and they sound great, all I did was upgrade the pots to 500k made the neck pickup sound amazing, then added a resistor to the bridge pickup to darken it back to 250k, it's perfect! I also added brass compensated saddles by recommendation of my guitar tech but I don't think it really needed them, it was fine with the stock steel ones, oh well I'm out $35 no biggy.

No dig on Warmoth, but they charge more for an unfinished body than you can pay for a whole working Squier guitar! Not worth it in my opinion.

Take a look at these Squiers:


https://imgur.com/a/jdK1C1s
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I made a choice based on my experience with squier’s I have them. I have an Affinity Sunset Metallic Strat , it’s a good playing guitar after a setup and a pickup change.
Stock pickups never did it for me with Squier.
I like the idea of Warmoth Made in USA, small company. They make good quality products and licensed by fender on most of them.
This body being bound is worth it and rear route.
 
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syscokid said:
My money is on a 500K... :cheers:
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I asked because I recently put an RS guitarworks harness in my Tele with 500k pots. Like Paul said, the neck pickup came alive and sounds great, but the bridge is very bright. Now, I just ordered a HB type bridge pickup for my Tele (SD Red Devil) and if it works out, great!..., but if it doesn't I might try the resister thing with the regular Tele bridge pickup.
 
DirtySteve said:
Don't sweat it, brother. I'll figure it out if I need to go that rout. :yesway:
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A quick Google search says: To make a 500k pot simulate a 250k pot when a specific pickup is selected, you need to solder a 470kΩ or 500kΩ fixed resistor in parallel with the pot.

I tried like 3 different values to see what I liked. When I get home tonight I'll look at my stash and see which ones I used and ended up with.
 
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paul-e-mann said:
A quick Google search says: To make a 500k pot simulate a 250k pot when a specific pickup is selected, you need to solder a 470kΩ or 500kΩ fixed resistor in parallel with the pot.
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Resistors in parallel reduce the overall resistance, which is always less than the smallest resistor in the equation. Basically, 1 over R1 + 1 over R2, etc.

Note that bringing a 500K pot back to 250K by putting another 500K resistor in parallel will change the taper (assuming it was a log pot to begin with). However, the minimum resistance between the wiper and one end will be zero Ohms, whereas the maximum will be ~250K.
 
PelliX said:
Resistors in parallel reduce the overall resistance, which is always less than the smallest resistor in the equation. Basically, 1 over R1 + 1 over R2, etc.

Note that bringing a 500K pot back to 250K by putting another 500K resistor in parallel will change the taper (assuming it was a log pot to begin with). However, the minimum resistance between the wiper and one end will be zero Ohms, whereas the maximum will be ~250K.
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Have you ever tried this, my Tele neck pickup was dark and muddy sounding, changed to 500k pots fixed it and it now sounds sweet, then brought my bridge pickup back to 250k with a resistor, the mystery resistor which one I don't remember lol. I'll find out tonight. Volume taper seems to be fine.
 
Not specifically on a Tele as such but yes, I've tweaked pots here and there and used lots of resistors in parallel. It's elementary electronics theory, really. If your volume pot is linear, adding a resistor in parallel won't change the taper - that only occurs with log pots of course.

Did you measure the original pot? What I've often seen - and is fairly common - is that pots used in guitars have significant deviations, +/-20% being common or even more. That means that you might have had, say, 220K or similar and ended up with 250K which can make quite a difference in response. Rarely do pots exhibit an increased resistance end to end in my experience, it's almost always the other way.
 
PelliX said:
Not specifically on a Tele as such but yes, I've tweaked pots here and there and used lots of resistors in parallel. It's elementary electronics theory, really. If your volume pot is linear, adding a resistor in parallel won't change the taper - that only occurs with log pots of course.

Did you measure the original pot? What I've often seen - and is fairly common - is that pots used in guitars have significant deviations, +/-20% being common or even more. That means that you might have had, say, 220K or similar and ended up with 250K which can make quite a difference in response. Rarely do pots exhibit an increased resistance end to end in my experience, it's almost always the other way.
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Yeah I measured the replacement pots they were pretty close 490 something k. Ultimately I listened with my ears what resistor sounded best.
 
paul-e-mann said:
Yeah I measured the replacement pots they pretty close 490 something k.
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That's what I mean, a 500K measuring ~490K is a little on the low side, not much though. What would be interesting would be a measurement of the original pots. One of my Tele's had a 220K-ish pot in there and missed a bit of 'bite', let's say. Replaced ith with a 250K (or very close, can't remember the exact spec) and bingo. Ended up replacing the pickups and adding a treble bleed circuit, but that's another matter.
 
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