Johnny Smith guitar pot value?

[Hiep Huynh]

I typically see only a volume pot on a Johnny Smith guitar. Anybody
know what the pot value is?

[Alex]

Johnny Smith's with one pickup use 500K audio taper, though a 250K can also
be used.

Alex Specker

Hiep Huynh <huy...@bigfoot.com> wrote in message
news:5f7q6tokqktubr6qc...@4ax.com...

[Hiep Huynh]

I have a WE Moll student archtop with a solid spruce top. It came
equipped with a kent armstrong floating humbucker (labeled PAF 0) and
a 25K volume pot. And it sounded VERY acoustic when amplified (even
with flatwounds and thru a megabrute IV).

I'm trying to achieve the Johnny Smith tone and I'm getting closer
with a 250K volume, 500K tone, and .01 uF cap. This is all through
research and experimentation (all over span of 2 years) and it just
occurred to me that I should simply try a 500K volume with nothing
else, duh. You know, you get caught up in the complexity of the
problem and you forget to try the obvious - curse of the engineer.

I'll give it a try and see what happens.

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001 08:44:58 -0500, "Alex" <pf...@lightlink.com>
wrote:

[Bob Agnew]

Try a 500K pot with a 0.047 microfarad cap.

"Hiep Huynh" <huy...@bigfoot.com> wrote in message

news:02os6t84a0kp2ddbp...@4ax.com...

[Arthur Quinn]

In article <02os6t84a0kp2ddbp...@4ax.com>, Hiep Huynh

Do you really mean 25k in your first paragraph or is that a typo?

If the pickup is too acoustic sounding for your taste, that may well
mean that its resonant frequency is higher than the Johnny Smith pickup
in which case no amount of juggling with the pot values will make it
match. You could experiment with adding small capacitors 270pF, 470pF to
1nF directly across the pickup to tune it down to a lower frequency to
get the basic sound right.

When the tone and volume are fully clockwise the two pots are
effectively in parallel across the pickup (because the tone capacitor is
so large). Varying one or the other by a few 100k will have little
effect on the damping of the pickup resonance and no effect on its
frequency.

The most fundamental characteristics affecting the sound of a pickup are
its resonant frequency and the Q or peakiness of the resonance. It is
possible to tune any pickup down to match another with a lower resonant
frequency but it would be very difficult to do by ear without test
instruments.

Some measurements on the neck pickup of a 1968 Gibson Johnny Smith:

With the volume pot at full and connected via a Gibson 3 metre (300pF
capacitance) lead directly into a 1MegOhm amp input, the pickup
resonates at 3.2kHz. The resonant Q is quite low at about 0.72

Turning the tone pot right down tunes the pickup to 600Hz and the Q
rises to about 1.5

The volume pot measures 700k audio taper.
The tone pot measures 600k audio taper.
The tone capacitor is 0.02uF.

Kent Armstrong will certainly know the meaning of these figures and
should be able to tell you what tone and volume pots and what tone
capacitor will allow you to match them with the pickup that you have.
The only difficulty may be finding the right small capacitor to place
directly across the pickup if it is necessary to tune it down in the
first place. This is not normally done, even though it is a perfectly
valid procedure - instead people will usually advise you to replace the
pickup.

The Johnny Smith Guitar is slightly unusual acoustically. Its sound is
loud, quite full but mid-rangey. There is plenty of archtop snap on the
top strings but the bass strings are very legato. This may affect how
convincingly another guitar can imitate it.

Arthur

--
Arthur Quinn
real-email arthur at bella dash cat dot demon dot co dot uk

[Wolfe Axe]

The guy that prolly knows the most about this subject is Rendell Wall at
Heritage. I know he's wired many guitars for Johnny hisself, as well as more
big name players that anyone alive.
Try Ren at e-mail:
fret...@kalamazoo.net

Just try not to bug him to death, or he'll mess up my guitars < :)


Jay Wolfe, direct sales-Heritage (world's largest dealer), Godin, Holland,
Wechter, vintage & pre-owned guitars. Specializing in fine Archtops.
http://wolfeguitars.com