Tone pot advice

[Dred]

Well, not my favourite way of starting being a posting member, by begging for help, but ran into a problem that needs to be looked at.

So I've one of them cheaper guitars, (one of the JS30s... i know...) and not surprisingly, something has to be wrong with it. Well, the tone pot rattles. I wouldnt care really, but theres a bit of a problem. The signal is prone to cut itself whenever the pot is disturbed, and it just muddies up my dirty tones quite bad. It just gets real lo-fi, yet the cleans remain dandy.

So my question is what would you suggest of doing? Ripping the wire straight out of it and taping it off, or fixing it and make it operable in one way or another? Keep in mind I havent got any of my tools like soldering iron and whatnot, since I moved, and the holiday season left me broke right now, haha.

Thanks for your time

[rjohnstone]

Replace both pots with a set of CTS pots.
The stock ones are cheap crap and a good set of CTS pots will only set you back about $10 or $15. Money well spent.

In the mean time, cut it.

Oh and Welcome.

[Dred]

Thanks for the welcome!

Yeah, I was considering that before, but I thought I'd ask for advice from the pros point of view first, just in case I miss any details.

Heard replacing pots is a bitch. That true?

[rjohnstone]

Piece of cake... if you have a soldering iron.

[Dred]

Oh, cool, cool. Didnt take pots apart before, so I was kinda blind on that one. Thanks dude. Proves I need to stay away from listening to people who exagerrate simple things, lol.

[Bengal65]

Check out the thread RobRR put up on soldering. Good info http://www.jcfonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52679 You just unsolder the wires from the pots. No need to take them apart. CTS Pots are great. RS Guitar Works pots are higher tolerence CTS pots. http://www.rsguitarworks.net/rsstore...hp?cPath=45_65 I don't work for them. I just keep replacing electronic parts on my guitars with their electronics.

Welcome to the forum, by the way!

[straycat]

+1 on the RS kits they are the best money spent on upgrading your electronics.

[Dred]

Thanks for the welcome Bengal.

I was wondering if the nail polish mod was worthy of giving it a shot? The "now you have it, now you don't" ability of the pot would widen up the horizon up a little bit. I mean I love the silky cleans with the pot a good halfway down, but I would also like to be able to toy around with the bite that the absence of the pot gives, what do you say?

[rjohnstone]

Get a "no load" tone pot that actually has a bypass built into it.
When you crank it full tilt, there's a click and it's out of the loop.
Here's one you can order, but it's got a pretty short shaft. Made for pick guard mounting.

http://www.guitarelectronics.com/product/CPNL1

I'm sure you can find one with a standard shaft on it.

The poor mans way is to put a mini-toggle on the ground coming off the tone pot, but that would require drilling.