Replace tone and volume pots on vintage lap steel?

[Joseph Lazo]

I have a '60s English Electronics Tonemaster with a string-through pickup. Both volume and tone controls seem to do little. After about 1/4 turn of either knob, there's virtually no difference in sound level or tone. I'm guessing the pots are bad, but maybe it's a capacitor or something. If I were to replace the pots, would I get a full sweep of volume and tone controls? Would it change or improve the tone? Is it even worth the bother?

[Raybob Bowman]

What are the values of the pots? Vol should be 500K or 1M. Tone probably 250K. If someone replaced them with wrong value puts, that could cause the problem you describe.

[Rick Aiello]

They may be “linear” taper potentiometers. Logarithmic (Audio) taper gives you a more useable sweep.

Try 250 K Ohm log pots for both … Mojotone audio taper pots have a nice usable taper …

https://www.mojotone.com/Mojotone-Vinta ... plit-Shaft

[Joseph Lazo]

Thanks for the input. I've got to remove the cover to see what the current pot values are. Had it off when I first got the guitar, but didn't write anything down. Doh!

My recollection of what they looked like is that they definitely looked like the original pots from 1963. It is possible for pots to go bad, right?

Rick, this guitar has your NiBro magnets in it!

[Raybob Bowman]

Pots can become scratchy and usually you can still clean the pots with Deoxit but that's not the problem you seem to have. Sounds like wrong values installed.