Pots

Sebastian

I recently acquired a new guitar, and after a few months with it I've come to a conclusion I reached with my last guitar, but was too scared to do anything about last time (I feared anyone might think I was going mad ? )

Anyway, I use a single overdrive with my setup, which is permanently on, and then change the amount of gain with the volume control. But I've noticed over the period of a couple of months that guitars becomes less flexable with this approach, and tend to sound gradually worse and more muddy as the volume is rolled off. At first I thought it was the inflexability of 500k pots, but my new guitar's 500k rolled off beautifully for a few months until recently...

If I make sense.

Is it a known thing that volume pots can "wear out" and sound worse as they're used over time, or am I going insane (or deaf)? ?

If I changed to 250k pots, would they wear out slower/not at all? ( if question #1 isn't that of a lunatic)

Are there any particular brands of super-high quality pots which sound better and last longer? (I believe one can order military-spec pots, but that they are a waste of time and money)

Thank you in advance ?

AlanRatcliffe

Pots do wear, but you should get a year out of even the cheapies and 10-15 years out of the good'uns. However, with a normal high impedance guitar circuit, the sound does muddy up as you turn the guitar's volume down - the change in impedance moves the pickups resonant frequency lower.

The way round this is a simple treble bypass circuit on the volume pot:
http://ratcliffe.co.za/articles/volumepot2.shtml

Gearhead

Imho a guitar sound can 'wear out' but this is the realm of psychoacoustics. The pots don't actually wear out I'm afraid. How often do you change strings?