Potted or Unpotted?

[B3]

Hi,
talk to Tim,
he has the answers and the parts. Your guitar will have 500K Pots but upgrading to CTS and some decent paper in oil caps with your Mules will optimize the difference. Maybe ask Tim for a little extra offset to help cut through the mix if your guitar is normally dark sounding.

[Will]

I think Gibson are using 300k at the moment for some weird reason...

[the_bleeding]

I'm about 90% sure it has 500k pots.

may i interject and say that gibson's electronics are in the dumps these days. The label on the pots will say 500k, but gibson pots apparently have a +200k variance... so it could be anywhere from 300 to 700. The only way to find out is to manually check their impedance, and replace the duds.

[viking]

its a recording of a small pub gig we did when i had the mules in my LP

Very nice livesound ,Steve! 8)            About "potted" and "unpotted",vintage PAF's are always unpotted.You can hear the difference,the unpotted is more "on the edge"(at least in my LP),more "lively".It can be a problem with high gain (feedback etc.) though.But if your LP is very dark sounding,unpotted could help to really "cut through the mix"...But keep in mind what Twinfan said:

To my ears, the potted pickup is a touch smoother. The unpotted is a bit brighter and more "lively". For more open vintage tones, unpotted is the way to go in my opinion. However, once you add a lot of gain they can start to sound shrill.

.I agree...

[StefanPrice]

I would NEVER EVER even think about not having a pickup potted.
I had some unpotted pickups in a Les P aul and they were unusuable, the whistling was at least twice the volume of the guitar if not more EVEN at bedroom level. Impossible to use.
I have now got BK potted and there is no problem.

I also took out some really nice single coils because when playing out they were feeding back VERY loudly, I changed them for others which were potted and there was no problem.

Unpotted together with heavy metal would be a bad mixture I would say.

[Twinfan]

I would NEVER EVER even think about not having a pickup potted.

It depends what music you play, how close to your amp you stand and who made the pickups  ;)

I played my unpotted P90s through a roaring 100w 1/4 stack last night.  No problems.

[Henk]

Steve,

I know you probably already have bought your mules.

Still id like to add that i have '57 Gibson classic/classic plus pafs in my Custom LP. They are potted and covered.  If playing metal they sound exceptionally dirty and mean (midheavy) expect alot of squiling at settings over a moderate gain level. Thats also the reason why they started potting pups anyway, tot prevent that you end up holding a pig :oops: at higher gain levels.

Unpotted and uncovered mules for general use? Nah not the right way to go imho. Personally i think its a shame you dont have the older Gibson 490R in your neck position, pulling the cover of that one gives you a wonderfull jazz pup imho.

And by the way, PAF's always have those sweet swelling harmonics, potting or covering might make a pu sound a little less clear but certainly wil not affect harmonics.

['Ash' J. Williams]

Wow everybody seems to freak out when the word 'unpotted' comes out.

Well, i had a set of unpotted mules in a LP and now i have a potted set in another one.
I think that what Twinfan said about potted and unpotted pups is a pretty good description. That's for the sound.

Now, for the feedback : i can assure you that i never had a problem even with strongs rectifier-like distortions.
Sure, the treshold exist (as with any pup) but it didn't seem it'll be reached a lot faster than potted pups to me...
I may be wrong but from my experience :
Unpotted gibson burstbuckers do feedback (so do other brands) while unpotted BKP don't.
I wonder myself how is this possible but Tim seems to be the Lvl 92 Pickup Winder kind of player.

If i were you (and if you haven't bought them yet), i'll decide the (un)potted option on a sounding caracter point of view,
and for the wide range of styles you're aiming for, i'd say potted Mules.

[Steve Kinsen]

Just thought I'd let you guys know how my unpotted (although covered!) Mules were sounding. I've given them a good play in now, in a gig situation: a 60W valve amp turned up fairly high with a hell of a boost up front. The result?

$%&#ing fantastic.

I've had no problems with feedback except when I set my amplifier's preamp gain to '$%&#-off' and boost my guitar's level to buggery and back with an overdrive pedal. Amazingly quiet, and the tone is absolutely to die for: they're so responsive I genuinely feel they make me a better player! Lots of positive comments from the audience: even in one of the worst acoustic spaces on the planet, the guitar just sounds brilliant.


I can't imagine the pickups'd respond well to a Dual Rectifier, but who in their right mind plays through a Dual Rectifier anyway?