Modding a CTS pot to no-load

[Rob DiStefano]

Why a no-load pot? More than a few reasons but here are my two faves -

It makes the perfect neck blender pot for a Strat because unlike using pot resistance to null out the neck pickup, a no-load pot is a switch that totally turns off the pup so no signal bleeds to the output.

There is no question that at higher volumes you'll hear the difference in yer pups' tones with the tone pot removed from the ciruit.

OK, here's how I mod a CTS pot to no-load ...

A CTS 250K audio taper split shaft pot, a pair of needle nose pliers for bending the pot tabs open and close, an Xacto knife to start the bending of the pot tabs, a single edge razor blade to remove the part of the carbon resistance strip that'll make the pot no-load.


Using the Xacto knife to get under the pot tab and lift it up just a little bit.


The needle nose prys open the case tabs.


Lift off the metal housing.


Lift off the fiber board carbon wiper tray with soldering lugs.


Flip over the tray - there are three solder lugs on the left, where the carbon strip meets the upper lug is where we wanna remove (scrape) off about 1/8" of the carbon.


The single edge razor blade has scraped off about 1/8" of the wiper's copper plating and black carbon film, right near that upper soldering lug.


Reassemble the pot and use the needle nose pliers to push back each of the four case tabs.


Get those tabs pushed well pushed down.


All done, and the pot is marked as a no-load.

[efnikbug]

Did some of the light brown stuff (glue?) chip off a bit in the process?

That's awesome though.

[Rob DiStefano]

That "light brown stuff" is copper plating that connects the solder lug to the carbon wiper strip. Yer removing, scraping off, both the plating and carbon. What's left is just the insulated tray fiber board.

Now, while you've got the pot open, and the wiper tray sitting in front of you, you can scrape around the carbon wiper strip and remove some of the carbon (on the EDGE of the strip) - this will allow you to increase the pot's resistance. Too many pots just don't measure up to what's stamped on the cover, and it's quite common to find a 250k pot reading 235k. Ditto's for 500k pots. With some careful wiper strip scraping, you can pull up a 250k pot to 300+k, for use with Gibby's.