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Turning a Tone Pot into a No-Load or Blend Pot

A no-load pot has several cool uses in guitar wiring. For one, it can replace a standard tone pot. Typical tone controls still have an effect, even when turned all the way up, but a no-load pot will essentially take the tone control out of the circuit, when turned up to 10. You can also use one as a blend pot to blend pickups into each other.

You can buy a no-load pot, or you can make one out of a regular pot. Here's how I turned a standard CTS pot into a no-load pot to use as a blender.

Tools you need:
  • Tiny flathead screwdriver, or something similar
  • Needle-nose pliers
  • Xacto knife

Steps:
  1. Start taking apart the pot by using the screwdriver to pry up the four tabs circled in red in the picture below.

    Then use the needle-nose pliers to bend them back. Don't bend them too far, or they might break - just bend them enough so that they're about straight. It should look something like this:

  2. Next, take the threaded shaft off.

  3. Then take off the wafer board with the lugs and flip it over. Like this:

  4. You can see strips of copper at each of the outer lugs connecting them to the resistive material in between. With the lugs pointing towards you, scrape away the copper at the left lug with the Xacto knife. The picture below should show what I mean.

  5. To finish, reassemble the pot. Replace wafer board, put the shaft back on top of it, and then bend the tabs back over the shaft.
You should now have an effective no-load pot. Instead of measuring 250k or 500k (or whatever value the pot is) when it's turned completely up, it should completely shut it off and not let anything through.
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