5 Push-Pull Pot Mods You Should Know
Push-Pull pot mods are a quick way to add new tones and a fresh new take on your guitar. Push-Pull modifications can open up a new world of tonal personality for your favorite instrument. We’ve noticed that our customers love getting push-pull pot modifications installed on their Prewired Pickguards and Prewired Control Plates. We thought we include our top 5 Push-Pull Pot Mods that you should know!
Before we get started, if you haven’t checked it out already, take a moment and learn how Push-Pull Pots work here. In essence,
A Push-Pull Pot is a normal pot that features an independent switching section attached to it.
PUSH-PULL POT MOD #1:
Coil Splitting With A Resistor
We know, Coil Splitting is in that category of “no-brainer” push-pull pot mods. However, coil splitting doesn’t work correctly across all humbucker designs. Certain humbuckers, like low-output humbuckers (like our Pure P.A.F.), do not give you a usable single-coil tone when split. Splitting a low output humbucker usually leaves you with a thin-sounding single coil that clocks in at around 4K. The tone that comes with it is not very usable at all.
However, using a 7K resistor in series to ground provides you with more a 6K Single Coil, much more in line with our Vintage Hots and Blues Specials!
MOD # 2:
2 Tone Caps, 1 Push-Pull Pot Mod
Hungry for more tonal options, but don’t have space? No worries! This Push-Pull Pot mod features two-tone caps – one value in the down position, another value in the up position. Many customers use this mod and select the 0.02mfd in the down position for a traditional Strat Tone, and Lindy’s Magic Cap in the up position for another tonal world.
MOD #3:
PHASE REVERSING WITH A PUSH PULL POT
Another cool mod you can perform with a Push-Pull pot: Phase reversal. It allows you to reverse the phase of a pickup to create new, creative sounds. The best part? You can reverse back to normal! Performing this mod requires your pickups to have a separation between your coil and ground. For an article on this, check out our previous post here.
Another quick tip: if you want to use this modification with a Blender Pot, check out this article here – it allows you to blend the out of phase tone with an in-phase tone!
PUSH-PULL MOD #4:
Engage / Disengage Volume Kit
Our Volume Kit is a Treble Bleed kit that allows your pickups to stay bright when you roll down your volume pot. When you roll your volume pot down with regular 250K pots, your high frequencies tend to go down with the volume. Your tone gets darker and jazzier.
Some guitarists like when the tone gets darker; however, many guitarists do not. Some guitarists want to keep their high frequencies where they are. The Volume Kit comes in here – it keeps your high frequencies steady as you roll down the Volume Pot. However, the Volume Kit can increase the brightness of your guitar permanently.
The Engage / Disengage Volume Kit Mod allows you to choose whether or not you want the Volume Kit on! The diagrams above let you choose whether you would like your Volume Kit on or off by default.
PUSH-PULL MOD #5:
Bright Switch
The Bright Switch is a push-pull modification that makes your pickups and guitar sound a little more ‘full-throttle’ when pulled up. To perform the Bright Switch mod, you need a standard Volume Pot and a Push-Pull Tone Pot.
When the Bright Switch is in the down position, Lug 3 of the volume pot connects to ground. When the Bright Switch is in the up position, the connection to ground gets removed. Due to this, the pickups become brighter and more ‘hi-fi’ sounding.
Note: When the connection to Ground gets removed from the Volume Pot, your volume pot will not work like a normal volume pot. It will never fully turn your signal down 100%.
Well, that should about do it for this article. I just wanted to showcase a few mods that our customers are enjoying installed on their Prewired Strat Pickguards and Telecaster Control Plates. Let us know what other mods you’d like to see in the future, and I’ll try to draw them up! ‘Till next time.
Products mentioned in this article:
Comments
16 Comments For This Post
Leave A Comment
Want to chime in to the conversation? Please do so! Please respect others.
Hello all, I’m going to fit a 2 tone cap switch to my Pacifica hss with 500k pots.
The standard 0.047uF and another with a value that is close to the tone control almost not doing anything.
Q1, Would this be the 0.0015uF Fralin magic cap?
Q2, Will fitting a treble bleed kit to the Volume pot negatively affect the above?
Q3, If I fit 17k & 15k pickups, I’ll have to fit 1m pots to get the most out of them. How will this effect the 2 tone cap switch?
Thank you for your help
Can I wire the same push push tone pot to coil split and two tone mods ???
Mod#2 you could use this for softening single coil sound in a mixed (HB and S) guitar. One of mine (like many) has a series HB and also single coils; I don’t wanna use 250K pots because HB will get muddy, so I chose 500K pots, and the HB sounds good. But when I select single coils, it suffers the typical harshness from using 500K pots with single coils. That’s where this mod can be sweet – pull up, and your single coil sounds better… and I can suggest a tweak.
Referring to Mod#2 diagram, In the “up” position, in place of Cap2, use a low-value cap in parallel with a high-value resistor. It’s like a treble bleed, or “volume kit”, but since it goes to ground instead of going to the output, better named “treble dump”. Some values as a starting point: for the cap, try Lindy’s magic cap (.015 microF) in parallel with a 500KOhm resistor. The result will be a tiny bit of overall signal will be grounded (via the resistor), and most of the very highs will be grounded (by the cap). It just sweetens the sound a touch. Of course, other cap/rez values will tweak the sweetening.
@PAUL NEEDS re Mod#1, you can take advantage of the other pole on the switch. The switch in the diagram is a two-pole, two-throw switch (that’s like most push/pull switches in guitar potentiometers these days). In the diagram, each pole has a red stripe; the two poles are affected simultaneously by the push/pull action. Mod#1only uses one of the two available poles. So you could hookup the Hot from your other pickup to the center terminal of the unused pole; and then from that pole’s “Up” terminal, solder a plain wire to ground. Thus, the switch’s terminals are almost a mirror image, except one side has a resistor and the other side has a plain wire (no resistor). By the way, this is an intriguing idea!
How can one arrange such a single switch to provide coil tap to a high output h/b on one side, and a partial coil tap to a low output h/b from a low output h/b on the other side of the switch, given that the two central switch contacts B and E are common?
This is for an instrument with two pot/switches, the other to have a phase reverse push pull.
I have been using PUSH PUSH pots on all my guitars for years now and i absolutely love em.
Hello. First of all I love learning things from your site. I have one question. Is it possible I use a dpdt switch as a mater volume while being able to engage/disengage my tone control? I am interested in a bass project without a whole bunch of knobs. Thank you for any help you can send my way.
I have 2 pots on my guitar, both are push pull. ive got a stacked (hum canceling) single coil in the neck, and a mid to high output humbucker on the bridge. One of the push pulls is the phase reversing mod, to get tele-like sounds. And the other was going to be a coil split, but then I thought “hey, this would render some positions non hum cancelling”.
I felt it made no sense to have even a hum canceling single coil if half of the pick up configurations would hum nonetheless, so I went with a parallel/series switching fot he humbucker.
I absolutely love the final result, all the guitar is still hum cancelling, and I can get a nice single-ish coil sound. I believe it to be a great and very underrated push pull mod to a humbucker pick up, totally recomended
In you first example push-pull, adding a resistor in series does not increase output. All it does is add resisitance to the circuit.
What if you have a mErnie Ball DB boost that functions as a “push push” does that change anything?
Hey Thomas,
Not sure! I don’t have any experience with that.
Gytis,thats exactly what that mod does.Basically.You can leave out the cap and ground lug d and get better results imo.
Excellent article I learned things I never realized you could do with the Tone and Volume and you made it very simple to understand.
Hi,
great article! Do you have a suggestion on how to wire a push-pull tone pot, where it’s bypassed in the down position and engaged in the up position? Kind of like the bright switch I guess, but with the volume pot always active and only the tone being toggled on or off.
Thanks
Hi there.
This article is a fantastic help when considering all kinds of modifications that improve the range of tonal choices to be able give to my clients, so many, many thanks for this.
I wondered also if you have any suggestions for the above kind of modifications on a Telecaster La Cabronita with 2 TV Jones original humbucker pickups.
Many thanks. Keith
Hey Keith,
Thanks for reading! As it turns out, each one of these mods will work on a Telecaster with TV Jones’s pickups installed. Just make sure you have the right kind of lead installed.