The Steel Guitar Forum

Considering a change in the tone pot in my Stringmaster (non-stock pot in there currently)

Is there a preferred tone pot/cap setup to optimize that 50s Speedy West style boo-wah effect? From my Telecaster days, I recall this effect works best if the amp is sweating a little.

I use a 1M ohm liner pot and .05uf cap in my Hudson stringmaster and enjoy that pairing for boo wah.

The larger pot value means you can go from the tone all the way rolled off to pretty open real quick. Tele’s are typically 250k ohm I think and I’ve seen some steel’s wired with that value too. When moving the tone pot quickly with your pinkie, a quarter turn (250k is a quarter of 1M) is much easier than a full turn of the pot.

I like Zoots idea here. As regards pot value, the usual is 250K Audio taper with single coil pickups and 500K Audio with humbuckers for both tone and volume, just because people found that with those pots the tone was pleasing when tone pot was full up. The 1M pot sound, which Fender tried on the very early Broadcasters (later telecasters) was deemed to be too bright and piercing. The audio taper got a smooth roll-off of high frequencies, again pleasing to people's ears. Going to a 1 meg pot and linear taper should give quite a more intense sound, and a quick response. Plus it costs around $5 to do, many can do it themselves, and it's reversable if don't like it or want to try something else.

Stock would have been a 1 meg linear tone pot and a 250k audio volume pot with a .047 cap. This results in a nice quick action and a good strong doo-wah but I suppose it could be better. And yes a little clean gain helps give the effect some punch.

Thanks. I’ll try a CTS 1-meg linear taper with a .05pf cap

Another thing to potentially consider is knob diameter. My Hudson seems to have a wider diameter than Fender stringmasters. I have another lap steel with tele knobs and even though it’s got the same pot and cap values the boo-wah technique is slightly less ergonomic. It’s a small difference, but noticeable to me at least.