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I bought a set of GFS Surf 90 Alnico II To put in my Jagmaster. What pots do you recommend, and also what Cap should I use to get the best sound? right now I have 1 meg pots, and an orange drop .47/200w cap. and it sounds kind of muddy.

It sounds muddy with the gfs pickups or the factory buckers?

The GFS pickups

Baffled by that, I have a set of Surf 90s in a Strat body with 1M pots and it sounds too bright, if anything.

I have decided to put in 250K pots. Thanks for all of your help.

If 1M sounds muddy, 250k is the opposite of what you want. How do you have them wired?

I didn't change anything from the original I believe. I just changed the pots/pickups and wired everything back the way it was.

If you want to hear how it will sound fully turned up with 250k pots, turn your 1M controls down to about 4 out of 10 (since they are log taper). That's not an approximation, it makes the pot resistance 250k and you can hear exactly what it will sound like. My guess is muddy.

Surf 90s are bright pickups and 1M pots is the brightest circuit commonly used on a guitar, so something else is wrong. Since 250k pots make the sound darker than 1M, it's not what you need. Instead you need to experiment with the pickup height, and if you haven't changed strings in a while, you need to do that as well. Having the pickups too close to the strings will make the sound muffled and blurry, and too far from the strings it will sound thin and weak. So experiment with that, is my advice.

Oh - and your amp is half the sound, what are you using?

I am using a super champ, sometimes clean, sometimes on the fender Tweed Bassman setting. I'm using a tele, and a strat to compare to. I am taking it apart again to take a picture to post to make sure I have the correct wiring. Is photobucket the only thing that works? I tried using my Flickr and it wouldn't display the photo.

I use Flickr - you just need to right click the picture to get it to display the size you want, then right click the picture and copy its URL.
Before you take it apart, play with the pickup height - you may be surprised!

If you are indeed using a .47uF tone cap, it's about 10x too big and would be rolling off more treble than you want it to. The correct value is .022 to .047uF (could be marked 22nF to 47nF, or 223 to 473). The 1meg pot should be fine.

.22uF and 500k pots would be my first choice with those Surf 90s.

paul_ wrote:.22uF and 500k pots would be my first choice with those Surf 90s.

Paul - again, the decimal point matters! .22uF is 10x bigger than you want for a tone cap.

I am using 250 pots, with a .022 cap. I'm not digging the sound. I will put in 500 pots and see where it takes me. I also have a treble bleed on there as well.

Thanks for all of your responses.

<a href="" title="wiring by medicinebleu, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2855/9344 ... 61394f.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="wiring"></a>

awesome Im trying to post a pic but I cant seem to figure it out.

<a href="" title="wiring by medicinebleu, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2855/9344 ... 61394f.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="wiring"></a>

Click the little "scene" button in the message composer then paste the URL into the box that opens.

yep thats what Im doing, I even switched from Chrome to Safari to see if it was an issue. I went to my profile and changed my HTML to on, but its still off. Weird.

You seem to have pasted the URL of the discussion thread into the image box. You need to paste the URL of the image.