Homepage Forums Guitar Discussion Guitar Left Handed Guitar Controls

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  • #24711
    robin
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    Left Handed Guitar controls I have found…….. are something of a compromise…..I always thought that the volume and sometimes the tone also…had a poor range and acted more like a switch on all my guitars…
    When I eventually investigated I found that they have r/h guitar controls
    fitted…… and asking around it seems to be widely understood that this is done for economic reasons , it appears not to be worthwhile for the manufacturers to buy in small quantities of componts as left handed guitars are still a small percentage of total sales…
    ……….the good news is that they are quite easy to swap over …..Allparts………and probably other sources too , sell the correct potentiometers for left handed guitars . You have to ask for anti-log pots as opposed to the normal logarithmic ones . …
    I have swapped several guitars over now and it makes them so much more comfortable to use ….
    ..the only slight probem I found was that the splines on the shaft of the new pots were different and I had to buy new knobs too to fit them ……
    ..another alternative which I have found it to use linear potentiometers instead . These are the third sort of pots which offer equal changes in resistance with equal degrees of movement . ……lots of guitars use these for the tone control anyway , and the ones on sale by Allparts have splines to suit my control knobs….
    Using a linear pot as the volume is not a problem , as the way in which the volume pot is wired in a guitar is not really like a conventional potential divider . As you turn the pot down the “un-used” part of the track is getting inserted in series with the pickup in use , so dropping the volume a little faster than a linear pot might normally …..
    I have guitars converted both ways now , and it is hard to tell the difference……..
    If anyone wants details of how to identify which pot is which , I can put some details on my website……….

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    • #126952
      1bassleft
      Participant

      Is it a Mex Strat? Fender US guitars are fitted with pots made by CTS and they are usually high quality. CTS pots should be available from allparts, guitar parts resource and other online sources.

    • #126953
      naked_ollie
      Participant

      I have a new strat which seems to have this problem on the volume pot. It works between say 1 and 4 on the dial, but after that there’s no further increase in volume. Can you recommend a 250k pot which will work and where I could find one? Thanks!

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