What size pots for Lil Killers? (and other questions)

[woolbrig]

I'm going to order a set of GFS Lil Killers and want to experiment with coil splitting them. A few questions...

What size pots do I need to use with these pups?

GFS sells a Push/Pull pots in 250K & 500K which size pot would be best for coil splitting?

Are the GFS pots ok? (I'm not looking for top of the line stuff)
How many of the pups can be split?

I found some wiring diagrams at the Seymor Duncan site. Is that what should I use?
Coil Splitting
3 Lil Humbuckers, 1 volume, 2 tone, 5-way switch

Sorry for so many questions, this is my first attempt at wiring a guitar.

[BillStickers]

Well really it's subjective.
250K pots put less resistance between points, so potentially both your Volume and Tone pots would Ground more of the Signal turned up to 10. What that means usually is the High Frequencies picked up by the Pickups are Grounded, it's very subtle, but it's enough for them to change the Tonal range. Thusly, 250K pots are said to be "Warmer".

Up the Resistance and your "10" Positions will be "Brighter" because there is more Resistance between points and the Ground; note, however, this all depends on how your pots are wired, I speak specifically of your typical Guitar wiring.

To put it in the simplest terms:

"More Resistance on Pots equals Brighter Tone in the 10 Position"

Think about how you want them to sound. I'm going to take a guess, forgive if I am wrong, that you're either into a kind of Metal sound with Heavy and Harsh Tone or simply dislike Hum and enjoy Stratty Tone.
For the Metal take the 500k, for the Strat take 250k.

Also consider mixing them, perhaps 250k for Volume, another for Tone and then a 500k Tone Pot for... the Bridge maybe.

[softwarejanitor]

Originally Posted by woolbrig

I'm going to order a set of GFS Lil Killers and want to experiment with coil splitting them. A few questions...

What size pots do I need to use with these pups?

GFS sells a Push/Pull pots in 250K & 500K which size pot would be best for coil splitting?

Are the GFS pots ok? (I'm not looking for top of the line stuff)
How many of the pups can be split?

I found some wiring diagrams at the Seymor Duncan site. Is that what should I use?
Coil Splitting
3 Lil Humbuckers, 1 volume, 2 tone, 5-way switch

Sorry for so many questions, this is my first attempt at wiring a guitar.

I put a set of GFS Lil' Killers in my Squier Strat SE, but I didn't try coil tapping them. I'm still running the original Squier dime sized 500k pots in mine (they weren't scratchy). Whether to go 250k or 500k is kind of a quandry with pickups if you are planning to coil tap. For single coils normally conventional wisdom is 250k are better, for double coils 500k. On the other hand, Squier and a lot of other imports use 500k pots even with single coils. I guess which will be better overall may depend on how much time you expect to be playing with the coils tapped.

As far as how many pickups could you tap, I don't think there is any reason you can't do all three if you put in multiple push-pull pots since all three of the pickups in a Lil' Killer set are 4 lead. Whether you will want to bother or whether those all those different combinations of settings will be useful, I can't tell you.

Also, the Alpha pots that GFS sells seem fine to me. Some people insist that only CTS will do, but I don't buy that.

[woolbrig]

Thanks for the info. Do the wiring diagrams I linked to look correct for wiring these up?

[softwarejanitor]

Originally Posted by woolbrig

Thanks for the info. Do the wiring diagrams I linked to look correct for wiring these up?

I don't know, I'm getting an XML error when I try to view them.

[motoman45]

I have a lil killer in the bridge with 250k pots and wired it for tone on the bridge...love it!!!!!!!!