Why upgrade your electronics.

When upgrading your pickups it's also a good time to upgrade your pots and electronics. You wont get the most from your pickups unless you are also using good electronics. To illustrate my point, take a off the shelf Epiphone with stock pickups and electronics. Then only upgrade the electronics. You will hear a dramatic difference in tone and your ability to control the range of amp overdrive and tone by using just the controls of the guitar will be significantly improved. Your going to want good electronics driving your BKPs. Get that cheap Chinese crap out of there.

You don't have to upgrade your electronics. Hey if it don't sound broke then don't fix it. You may be so happy with your new found BKP tone when you first get them that there is no way your going to change anything. That's okay. Maybe down the road having this opportunity for a further upgrade in tone and more dynamics will give you something to look forward too. These are very inexpensive modifications.

YOU NEED TO UPGRADE POTS IF:

1.They are noisy and cleaning will not cure the problem.

2.When bumping the volume down to 8-9 your tone and volume drops considerable. You do not have a nice wide range of volume over which to control your overdrive levels.

3.Lowering the volume causes a sharp treble or high end roll off. This should not happen with BKP's. You are still in cheap pickup land if this is happening and its due to your electronics at this point. Some hi end roll of is desirable and part of the classic single coil sound. You'll know the difference.

4.There is a buzz when dropping your volume.

5.Finally, If you are using BKP (or vintage pickups) and your electronics are highly modified. The real McCoy does not need these modifications which showed up to compensate for the inherent flaws of cheaper and improperly made pickups and electronics.

6. I guess I should add the if you have a stock Epiphone, Gibson or Fender, upgrading to CTS pots and upgrading the capacitors and wiring will GREATLY improve your tone.

Upgrading your pickups to BKP is a smart move. Whether your upgrading your guitars stock pickups or some other brand of expensive boutique pickups you are going to hear a very musical difference. This is a fact documented through the course of my many BKP sells. However, to get the most out of your BKPs (or any pickups for the matter) you need to use good quality pots for your volume and tone controls. I sell CTS pots because they are the standard, they are very good and reliable. They sound much better than the cheaper stock pots your guitar comes with stock. Most new $1500-$5000 dollar Gibson's don't have a pot inside as good as a CTS. Heritage guitars do and so do some of the other better manufactures. Fender does not use CTS, not even in he custom shop. They save a lot of money by buying cheaper pots.

Many guitar techs do not really distinguish from using linear or audio
taper pots when it comes to installing pots or even worse upgrading the pots in your beloved instrument. Most techs are at least savvy enough to use audio taper. We have the same situation at the guitar factory such as Gibson Fender and Paul Reed Smith. They'll typically use one type or another pot.

In general, this is how it should be done. This is Peerless Tone 101. For your volume pots use audio taper. For your tone pots use linear taper. Now, the tone gurus who actually know this will agree or disagree depending on what you are trying to achieve. Audio for volume pots and linear for tone is a good rule of thumb because it expand the dynamic operating range of your volume and tone controls Not paying attention to where you are using linear or audio certainly hampers your pickups dynamic operating range and tone. Audio taper for volume and linear taper for tone. We can go into the the details of why elsewhere when ww have more space. Contact me for explanations or your own suggestions and arguments: these are greatly appreciated.

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