pots n caps advice

[m t soule]

What's the difference sound wise between
500k pots and 550k pots
And
330pf caps and 0.022pfu

This is for re wiring one of my rg550 s to bkp recommend specs.

Also there is a tiny capacitor type thing on the volume pot, what is it what does it do? I blindly removed it off all my others to match bkp wiring diagram .
Performing these upgrades is rather familiar to but I never actually educated myself as to the WHY of it all.

Thanks guys for helping!

[AndyR]

Somebody else will hopefully chime in on the first bit, but I can tell you the tiny capacitor across the volume pot is a "treble bleed".

Its job is to "let more top-end through" as you turn down the volume knob. The idea is to combat the natural loss of treble as you bring more of the volume pot's windings into play.

Some people like them, some people don't. I prefer not to have them (I check for and remove them from any guitar I own). I think the reason I don't like them is because I learnt to gig using the volume pot and I learnt to use the "tone control" characteristic of a volume knob. When I play a guitar with a treble-bleed, I invariably think the pickups are "weedy" because I tend to perceive a "loss of bottom-end" when I turn the knob down.

A treble bleed won't do anything until you start turning the volume knob down. Try reconnecting it and see what it does for you. I can guarantee you that I won't(!), but either way is fine, just depends how you want the guitar to sound/behave.

[BigB]

What's the difference sound wise between
500k pots and 550k pots

Nominal or real value ?

Any component has a tolerance between the nominal and real value. wrt/ pots, the usual tolerance is +/-10%, which means a "500K" pot can read between 450 and 550K. The higher the value (real value I mean) the less high-end you loose (pot wide open - yes even a wide open pot impact your tone), and the difference between a 450K and a 500K pot is audible. The point of 550K (nominal value) pots are they are less likely to be too much under the 500k mark.

And
330pf caps and 0.022pfu

I assume you mean 0.033 and 0.022 ? Because the difference between 330pf and 0.033pf is "orders of magnitude" ;)

Anyway: the higher the cap's value, the lower the cut-off frequency, so a 0.033 cap will start to cut off highs at a lower frequency than a 0.022.

Also there is a tiny capacitor type thing on the volume pot, what is it what does it do? I blindly removed it off all my others to match bkp wiring diagram .
Performing these upgrades is rather familiar to but I never actually educated myself as to the WHY of it all.

cf AndyR's answer. A well designed treble-bleed is supposed to counteract the (inherent) loss of treble when rolling down the volume pot _without_ altering the overall tone. I have yet to try a well-designed treble-bleed, all the one I tried so far made the tone brighter and "tiny" as soon as you touched the volume.

An alternative is the "gibson 50s" wiring, which has other side-effects you may or not appreciate, but for me it works better than any treble-bleed I ever tried.

[m t soule]

Cheers guys!
I took the plunge and upgraded all the above to bkp specs and whipped out the treble bleed.

The difference is significant.  Open and more over tones present across the board.
Makes me wonder if that difference would be heard on the stock pickups too.........A less costly and effective upgrade potentially.

[BigB]

The difference is significant.  Open and more over tones present across the board.
Makes me wonder if that difference would be heard on the stock pickups too.........A less costly and effective upgrade potentially.

You may possibly hear a difference with the stock pups, depending on the original and new pots and caps respective real values etc and how "bad" your treble-bleed was - but certainly not as much as a pickup change (I assume you changed everything at once ?). 

[m t soule]

I did yes.
I swapped out a crawler and put in a cold sweat and new wiring across the board.
I put the crawler in another guitar which already had the wiring sorted.
I was not happy with any pick up in the guitar with the old wiring and now i am :)