Gibson Historic potentiometer....

[billyz]

I ran across this a few weeks ago when trying verify some NOS pots.

TM

That is a really cool find . Now If I can just find a box of old centralab
500KA pots.

[rooster]

That is a very cool find indeed, thanks for being such a sleuth and sharing.

OK, vibratoking, here you go. I tested three different Hamer pots:

0 - .3 - .7 - .3 ohms
1 - 1.1K - .99K - .63K
2 - 36.15K - 36.27K - 39.52K
3 - 77.20K - 81.70K - 83.0K
4 - 120.8K - 124.6K - 123.3K
5 - 166.8K - 170.6K - 169.4K
6 - 215.9K - 217.5K - 225.7K
7 - 305.8K - 311.2K - 311.3K
8 - 398.0K - 408.3K - 409.1K
9 - 496.2K - 502.5K - 504.5K
10 - 517.9K - 523.3K - 520.4K


And thanks for taking the time to do this. I'm posting a pic of the Hamer pot, it's unique in that it has he word 'HAMER' stamped on it, hard to miss.

[vibratoking]

Rooster - Thanks for the data on the Hamer pots. I updated the Excel file on page 3 to reflect all the data so far.

The Hamer pot is worse than the RS Superpot and I find the RS to be unsatisfactory from the standpoint of useable range with out any volume jumps over the full rotation of the pot. This is purely my opinion and YMMV.

[eazilyled]

I dropped a set of these pots in my 335 copy the other day and I concur with what others have said in that they work really well with the Express.

I also switched to 50s wiring and got rid of the treble bleeds caps I had in there.

Before I had to dial the volume down to 1 or 2 to get a clean tone, now it gets pretty clean at 7.

[rooster]

I only have office.org to read the spread sheets here, but it converts this file to a PDF file. So here's a PDF of the spread sheet, I figure everyone has a free Adobe program to read it with. This was good info and thanks for the taking the time to make the spread sheet.

[redshark]

Anybody knows about a long shaft pot with similar taper than the historic pot (short shaft)?
What other guitar in the market besides the Gibson USA Les Pauls use a long shaft pot?

[racerx23]

I just received 4 historic pots from the USA, as i can't get them in Australia.
my problem is 3 of them measure very low and im not sure if there usable.
readings are 499..perfect, then 430, 431 & 440 which is below 10% tolerance, any one have any experience or comments with such low readings tone pots, or should i return them?

Also is it best for the highest reading pot to go with the neck pickup vol, 2nd highest for the bridge pickup vol etc, ???

Kind Regards, Craig

[Cliff Schecht]

In a situation like that I'd go smallest value on the bridge (to help tame brightness a wee bit) and the highest on the neck (vice versa). The two tone pots won't make much difference so I wouldn't sweat it too much.

Pots are never all that accurate FWIW. You are about 14% off in the worst case which isn't great but is good enough for rock and roll. I bet you like the pots a whole lot more than you hate them!

[katopan]

Hey, another Aussie, same city as me, and you're name's Craig as well! Good luck with the pots. I'm sure the values will still work out fine.

[redshark]

499..perfect, then 430, 431 & 440

Use that on your advantage!!

499 for neck volume
430 for bridge volume
440 for bridge tone
431 for neck tone.

That is what I would do!!

[racerx23]

thanks guys for your encouraging reply's, i think I'll give them a try.

Kind Regards, Craig.

[billyz]

I have installed about ten sets of these now , vintage wiring and NOS caps. Everyone has been very pleased with the Taper/sweep . The values are not all perfectly 500k but it is the taper that we are really after. You can increase the value by removing the back and scraping the side of the track, inside and out.

They are a little jumpier than the old Centralab but better than anything else I have tried and a sure cure for the Linear taper pots Installed in most later Gibsons. vintage wiring helps along with good caps. I have found a few pickups that don't play as nice with the vintage wiring , mostly epiphone , where one is a high value and the other not.

These pots and vintage wiring /caps, work best with vintage wound pickups, like 7.5k to less than 8k. I have also found that Pickups with the multiple leads/ plastic wiring do not work as well either. Otherwise your results may vary.
My benchmarks for tone are Claptons Beano tone , Peter Green, and Michael Bloomfield/super sessions.

[angelodp]

Getting ready to do the upgrades ( finally ) on a decent Epi LP. I pulled the pots and here is what they read.

Alpha 500k ( Audio taper ) actually reads 544k

0 - 0 -- 0%
1 - 7k -- 1.2%
2 - 19k -- 3.4%
3 - 30k -- 5.5%
4 - 59k -- 11%
5 - 85k -- 15.6%
6 - 115k -- 21%
7 - 252k -- 46%
8 - 359k -- 66%
9 - 487k -- 89%
10 - 544k -- 100%

It would appear that this pot ( used in the volume position ) is not 10% taper but rather a 15%. Not sure what to deduce from this, but here is some more data. Its a typical Alpha.

Just to clarify... I have two of these pots and they were used for tone not Volume as stated above. They used linear 500k's for the Volume. So I am thinking that I will ditch the linear pots and use the tone pots ( 544k ) with the nice taper for the volume position and score another two 500k's for the tone.


Unless I am mistaken the Alpha looks very close to the Centralab!!


[IMG:752:451]http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii9/ ... rscopy.jpg[/img]



Cheers Ange

[Bear]

Hah! I've been looking to see if anyone does the true log stuff with pull switches or dual concentric for some wiring projects and not coming up with any luck for anything that looked of the same breed as the Historic pots. I'm gonna just try my luck now.

[angelodp]

Hi, I was hoping that there would be some feedback on the alphas, given that they are so close to Clab and so cheap??

On the other hand - get what you pay for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSgUfJIxGlc

LOL A