Component suggestions for my Tele project?

[Justinm1789]

Hi there, first time assembling a guitar from parts and was hoping to get some advice.

- What potentiometers are stiffest/most secure? I would like to load this guitar with a 500k volume and 250k push-pull tone control (push-pull for engaging HP filter. I have that part figured out.) and I want the knobs to generally stay in one place unless I deliberately turn them.
- Likewise, looking for a higher-quality 5 way switch (For Bill Lawrence's 5-way wiring) that is also particularly stiff and requires a fair amount of effort to switch positions.
-Linear/audio taper, which is better for volume and tone? I've read that audio taper for volume and linear taper for tone works well, but I've also read a lot of conflicting information. Basically I'm looking for a smooth taper for both.
-Looking for quality wiring that isn't crazy expensive or vintage spec or whatever.


Thanks!

[DRodriguez]

Are you going single coil or humbucker? I find 250 works better for Tele Pickups since they are twangy enough as is, and don't need the added high end of 500 pots.

[Justinm1789]

Are you going single coil or humbucker? I find 250 works better for Tele Pickups since they are twangy enough as is, and don't need the added high end of 500 pots.

Dimarzio Area T neck and Chopper T bridge, which are technically humbuckers. High output and a little on the dark/warm, so a 500k volume pot and .022mFd tone cap to brighten them up to my taste. I play with a lot of cold, sterile, high-output clean tones. I was thinking the EMG T-set initially, in which case I would have gone with 250k, but high-output passives are less hassle and the EMG's are incompatible with Bill Lawrence's 5-way wiring scheme. (positions: 1. neck, 2. neck/middle parallel, 3.bridge, 4. neck/middle parallel partially out of phase, 5. Neck with 10% less low-end)

[ChannelingHemingway]

Fuck yeah tele thread. 10 demerits for humbuckers, though

First: cap values. A smaller cap won't make your tone brighter, but it'll limit the amount/speed of high frequency bleed-off, if that makes sense. So a .022uf and a .47uf cap will sound the same with the knob at 10, but the .022uf at 0 will sound like the .47uf at 9.5-ish. I know that's kinda' nitpicky, but whatevs. I've read that ceramic caps can be microphonic (I've never noticed an issue) but don't spend money on "audiophile" caps or whatever. The cap in a tone control just blocks frequencies and isn't actually in the signal path.

Potentiometers: linear vs audio taper depends on how you play. if you do a lot of volume swells or play with your volume wide open then audio is where it's at, because most of the useful range is in the last 30%ish of the rotation and the bottom half is just too quiet to be usable. You may find that a linear taper gives you more finite volume control over the range of the pot.

Components: hard to go wrong with alpha pots (I've had slightly better luck with the 24mm than the 16mm, but both are solid options) and either switchcraft or CTS for your switches.

Protip: solder a resistor with 20-25% the value of the pot between the ground and wiper lugs. You've just made an audio taper pot that more closely follows an audio taper than an audio taper pot. The resisting layer on a log pot is usually broken up into two or three linear sections because it's way cheaper to manufacture. But the maths involved with parallel resistors get you mighty close to the real thing.

Aaaaand I like to wire the tone to the volume's wiper, but YMMV.