Audio taper for tone?

[Steve Sawyer]

I know that an audio taper pot is preferred for volume controls, but is this true also for tone controls, or are those usually linear pots?

[David King]

What ever works best for you with your cable's capacitance and your amp's input impedance. I would suggest trying an audio taper first since they are easier to find and then going to a linear taper if the log taper doesn't work well enough for you.

[Steve Sawyer]

Thanks, David - so there is no common practice? I just added a couple of clearance Mighty Mite 250k linear pots to a StewMac order, and was wondering if they'd be worth using for tone controls.

[David King]

Common practice is to do things as cheaply and profitably as possible so reducing the parts inventory is routine in any industry. You may hear a difference with your set up or you might not. We are talking about subtracting treble from a signal and that's subtle and highly dependent on the surrounding circuit.

[Steve Sawyer]

Common practice is to do things as cheaply and profitably as possible so reducing the parts inventory is routine in any industry.

Hah - yeah!

I'll be using these on a new build, and for $2.50 each, I bought a few to play with.