Should I use 250K or 500K controls?

Regardless of what type of pickups are in your guitar, higher potentiometer resistance values produce a little more power and treble response. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is a matter of individual taste. In the early days, Gibson used 500K controls and Fender used 250K, thereby starting the single-coil = 250K, humbucker = 500K theory. Even though neither company has stuck strictly with this formula since then, the theory lives on. You won’t damage your pickups or your amp by mixing and matching different value controls, and one of our current favorites is a 250K volume control and a 1 Megohm tone control, EP1202.