It's a pot - what's there to say? Actually a fait bit.
I love Bareknuckle pickups, have a bunch of them, hand wound in Devon & have had a lot of contact with Tim way back in the early days. Great company and wonderful attention to detail.
Which brings me to this pot. 280k is just perfect for a strat imho - brings out a good deal of treble sparkle in the instrument which is somewhat tamed with a 250K pot (which could be a significantly less given pot tolerances). And this CTS pot adapted to Bareknuckle specs comes in right on the mark. Good turning resistance; neither too loose of too stiff for my tastes.
Now for the custom audio taper. It does a fair bit on the last bit of the turn of the pot (compared to an old 280K potentiometer I had, which got so scratchy that it couldn't be "repaired" with contact cleaner & had to go to that great potentiometer resting place in the sky). No issue with that top of the range taper; I've gotten used to it.
But I do have an niggle. Just as Joe Perkins had noticed, my pot is also silent on "1" rather than "0". This means that the 0 to 100% volume range doesn't go from 0 to 10 on the knob but from 1 to 10. So essentially 90% on the knob travel is effective, rather than 100%.
"Now", I hear you say, "Tremblox you are splitting hairs again. A volume pot is infinitely adjustable. The volume you get just depends on how finely you can twist the #*€+ thing!"
And I'd say that you are absolutely right. But it seems so strange to me that a company like Bareknuckle would define an audio taper from 1 to 10, rather than 0 to 10. And if Bareknuckle wouldn't, then it would perhaps point to a CTS quality issue. Questions, questions.
Perhaps all of this is academic. It seems like a good pot. The value is perfect for my strat. The volume taper is something I will absolutely get used to, ( I mean, how often do you play with your guitar volume on "1" anyway??). We'll see how long it lasts before it gets to crackle - hopefully many years down the road.
i think it's worth buying this for a passive strat based on it's total resistance value alone. So I would recommend it.
And Thomann, if you're listening perhaps you could consider stocking the VIPot product for the fetishists amongst us? I'm surely not alone.
