In my opinion, it is bad advice to replace anything (except your pickups). I would agree that pickups make a big difference in the sound of your guitar. Pots, capacitors, jacks, wiring and switches only need replacing if broken or noisy. I have the cheapest components in my guitars, they sound great and they're not noisy. The capacitor only works as a low-pass filter when the tone pot is engaged. How often do you actually use your pots? I know I only use my volume pot to shut my guitar up.

case study: My brother bought a Tokai LS160 with all those 'wonderful' goodies such as switchcraft jacks, cts pots and sprague orange drop capasitors and in all honesty it makes no difference. We both prefer my washburn raven with no-name electronics and my 2003 squier with garage wound pickups.

Ross, Switch the pots in your washburn and upgrade the electronics. comparing two different guitars isn't comparing apples with apples.

Also, as has been stated countless times here, having a great guitar and a rubbish amp degrades your tone. as does having a great amp and guitar and horrid cables or pedals. It all adds up.

I used to be of the same opinion as you, since upgrading my strat's insides and getting better cables I like it. I'm gonna be getting a new amp and a better pedal soon too, I'm a convert...

Donovan, you're completely right. I wasn't comparing apples to apples. So I'll compare my oranges to oranges. A while ago I replaced all the electronics in my squier with a wiring kit from stewmac, and it was exactly the same as it was before the rewiring. Recently the CRL switch also started giving me trouble. +- R230 wasted? Yes I think so.

rossgve wrote: a wiring kit from stewmac

There's your mistake right there. Great place for specialised tools, but their range of electronics is lacklustre at best. They've only recently started stocking anything other than the cheapest Asian parts. R230 gets you about what your Squier had in it already - Alpha pots, a cheap jack, cheap wire and a ceramic cap.

Even with CTS - they have different ranges and a wide variety of options - taper, tolerance materials, shaft, shell, sizes, etc. The brand name alone does not guarantee you a top-of the line part. The best pots (CTS, Bourns, etc.) are usually designed specifically for guitar use - but it's only the guys selling/using tens of thousands of them that can order them directly from the manufacturer - the rest are buying the same budget pots from a middleman.

Recently the CRL switch also started giving me trouble.

Spray it with some isopropyl and switch it back and forward a few times and it'll be fine.

Thank you for your input Allen. I fail to see how it can be scientifically explained that the quality of the components make any difference in the sound whatsoever. Can someone please explain what makes a high quality jack high quality?

With regards to the switch: It didn't make proper contact so I've already replaced it, but thank you anyway for the advice.

rossgve wrote: I fail to see how it can be scientifically explained that the quality of the components make any difference in the sound whatsoever.

Passive guitar circuits are very high impedance and very reactive. Even something as simple as a pot can make a big difference to the response of the circuit:
- tolerances can make a huge difference to the tone, shifting the resonant peak of the circuit - a standard +/-20% tolerance means a range between 200 and 300K Ohm, which is a massive variation, particularly in a Strat or other single-coil circuit;
- The same variation in the tone pot means a very different amount of treble being bled off, even when the control is turned all the way up;
- The smoothness of the taper can make a big difference to those of us who use our volume controls a lot to control drive or for volume swells as can the physical feel of the movement.

Things like caps are a bit more nebulous (or outrageously snake-oily) in some respects, but once again, tolerences do make a measurable difference. With wire, anything that makes soldering easier and helps guarantee a better connection is good. Insulation that doesn't melt (cloth or teflon) reduces the chance of shorts, thicker wire and better conductor quality means less resistance (not a biggie considering the small lengths involved, but it all adds up). Any contact that is more corrosion resistant is going to last longer. etc., etc., etc..

Then again, the best pickups and electronic parts in the world won't help much if a player is using a cheap multieffect, a cheap solid-state amp and connecting it all together with cables that come free with cheap guitars. Weakest link and all that. So mileage does vary.

Can someone please explain what makes a high quality jack high quality?

High tolerances, ruggedness, durability. While the durability is the biggest thing for me, even the difference between metric and imperial sizes can mean a tendency to making bad contact.

One key thing is that you're often replacing the values of the caps and the taper of the pots - those things undoubtedly make a difference even if the quality of the parts does not, or exerts a marginal influence. Mostly the higher quality parts are about reliability. Reliability is great when you play gigs or simply don't want to replace these parts every 5 years.

And of course replacing the nut and the tailpiece can make a big difference to the feel and playability of the guitar.

My LS160 is freakin' awesome, but there's no substantial difference the parts make compared to my friend EZ's LS92 - except for feel and reliability (although, as an aside, I don't know why all stop tailpieces aren't aluminium. Even if it does little for the tone, they really are substantially lighter). The values make a difference though. My Gibson Les Paul and SG on the other hand I can't do much with the volume pots because of the taper. I have to basically leave them on 10, and I'll change them one of these days. My perception is that they go from almost no volume to full in less than a quarter turn. Not so with the pots on the LS160 which give me excellent control of volume and drive.

I went a-measuring on some pots and wire here at home and these are the results:
Resistance of multimeter wires: 1.5 Ohm (this value was subtracted from the actual readings of the following components)
Unbranded 100kOhm logarithmic pot turned down: 1.3 Ohm. (0.0013% of the pot value)
Unbranded 100kOhm logarithmic pot turned Up: 99.7 kOhm. (0.3% error)
Other unbranded 100kOhm logarithmic pot turned Up: 100.5 kOhm. (0.5% error)
Unbranded 50kOhm logarithmic pot turned Up: 49.7 kOhm. (0.6% error)
1m long, 1mm thick wire: 0.1 Ohm.

Even if a CTS pot reads zero when turned down, it differs very little from other brands of pots and one cannot justify the huge difference in cost. I understand that the taper of the pot is important especially if you do volume swells, but this is why manufacturers make logarithmic taper pots. The values of the respective components have a much more direct impact than the quality of the part. As for reliability; over the years I've had only one selector switch break. Corrosion isn't an issue because we use rosin core solder.

some interesting things that i came across a while back:

http://www.tdpri.com/forum/just-pickups/317926-video-demo-pickups-half-out-phase.html

http://www.harryj.net/voltone.xls

they may be of relevance. the spreadsheet is particularly cool.

You can get Bourns guitar pot and the Bourns Model 95 Premium Guitar pots from RS Electronics in SA

Be very specific when ordering about Audio or linear taper, and knurled or plain shafts and shaft lengths

http://za.rs-online.com/web/c/?searchTerm=guitar+&sra=oss

I think the ideal guitar tone pot taper is 25/75 or 35/65 may be Alan can verify,

if you have a standard 10/90 audio taper which comes on to steep ...a resister can change that to near the aforementioned target tapers

makepeace wrote: some interesting things that i came across a while back:

http://www.tdpri.com/forum/just-pickups/317926-video-demo-pickups-half-out-phase.html

http://www.harryj.net/voltone.xls

they may be of relevance. the spreadsheet is particularly cool.

The log scale (x-axis) will be frequency (Hz), and the linear scale (y-axis) will be amplitude (not sure of the scale but probably Volts*10^-2. the voltage will be different from pickup to pickup, but its the shape that's important).

IMO this is an incredibly powerful tool if you learn how to use it properly. The tone shaping at the guitar side is instrumental (bless me) to the final tone output.

edit: as a basic example - have a look at the graph as it stands without changing any values. With tone at 10 (purple line, full off as I see it), notice how different the response curve is compared to your actual guitar out (red line). That's quite a bit of high end you lose, just by having a non switching tone pot there!

also look at what happens when you put your cable capacitance up to 5000pF - massive shift of the curve towards the bass side. shows you how important a good cable actually is! i think this discussion deserves another thread. so i'll make one.