Lollar Pickups Blog

Welcome to the Lollar Pickups Blog, where we share in-depth information and stories about the pickups we build.

The Mystery of the ‘59 Jazzmaster Tone

The mystery of the ‘59 Jazzmaster tone.

I still see discussions on internet forums about whether the wood in an electric guitar has any effect on its tone, or if it’s all in the pickup. There are some people who insist the instrument itself makes no difference in its tone.

There was a good series of articles a few years ago in the Guild of American Luthiers quarterly magazine about how just the body shape of a solid body electric guitar affects nodal patterns of vibration at different frequencies—just the shape of the body!

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Size DOES Matter

When replacing potentiometers (pots), there are differences in shaft size you’ll need to be aware of. The shaft we are referring to is the part of the pot with threading that sticks through the guitar top or pickguard where it is held down by a threaded nut. First, there are differences between metric vs imperial shaft diameters, with metric being about 1/4” in diameter and imperial being 3/8” in diameter. In my opinion, if you have the smaller diameter shafts, it’s worth reaming out the hole to accept a 3/8” shaft. The larger diameter pots are typically higher quality in all aspects. Fortunately, you will usually only find small diameter pots on the cheapest guitars. Always use a reamer to enlarge the holes because a twist tip drill can crack the wood of the guitar top.

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Tone Chasin’: The Skinny on Capacitors and Potentiometers (Or Caps and Pots)—Part 1

Tone Chasin’: The Skinny on Capacitors and Potentiometers (Or Caps and Pots)—Part 1

By Jason Lollar

Finding your guitar tone involves a mix of science and voodoo. This alchemy includes the role of capacitors and potentiometers, also known as caps and pots. In this article, we focus on pots, and separate fact from fiction and explain how they are typically used to give you greater tone and volume control.

Choosing the Right Control Pot

There are some standard assumptions concerning pot and cap values and their use for different pickup designs, like single coils or humbuckers. These conventions can be useful, but you don’t need to blindly follow them.

Take the pot values first. Pots with higher resistance — like 500K compared to 250K — prevent higher frequencies from bleeding through to ground more than lower ohm pots. This means a 500K pot provides a brighter overall tone than a 250K pot. Higher ohms also give you a cleaner and punchier sound on the bass strings.

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