Tokai Pots

If you own an old Breezy sound Tele, or an early Love Rock or Reborn model, you may want to see if the right value pots are in them. I have 3 Breezy sound Tele's that came with 1 Meg pots stock. Should be 250K. A 1 Meg makes a Tele too bright. I also have a Reborn and Love Rock that came with 250K pots. Should be 500K. The 250K pots make a Les paul too dark sounding.

I have a 84 breezysound which is very bright, apologies for my ignorance but how can you tell what the pot rating is?
By the way I have read some implied and unjustified critiscism regarding the way this site is maintained. Compared to what we had a few years ago i.e. nothing, Ned is to be congratulated for providing this forum. Trying to find anything out about older Tokai's was like trying to find a Man Utd fan in Manchester.

Mick

There are no hard and fast rules, but generally the pot's value is stamped or inked on the back of the pot. If your Breezysound pots have markings that say D1M, or 1Meg you might consider changing them to 250K. If you can't tell from the markings you can buy/borrow an ohm meter and put one lead on the center lug and the other on either outside lug and turn the pot until you get the highest reading. That's the pot's value. Pots are sometimes way off spec. The one meg pots in my Breezysound for instance measured between 800K and 979K.

Regarding this site, I say hats off, kudos, etc, etc, to whomever is responsible for this site. Great service for fans of Tokais I am a pro player who has used Tokais for years. I use them because they feel great, sound great, period. I have 54' 57' 59' 62' original Fender Strats. 57' 58' original Pauls, 65' 67' original Teles. I have found Tokais to consistently sound as good as real vintage instruments. So as a player I don't think of Tokais as copies at all, just great guitars. The best sounding Les Paul I have ever played on stage is a lowly LS50 Les Paul Reborn. Three piece top, three piece back.

I forgot to mention on my post that old Breezysounds also have a bypass capacitor on the volume pot, probably 120pf value. Usually a little green thing soldered between the middle and outside lug on the volume pot. This capacitor makes the guitar even brighter when you turn the volume down. It's really a pretty bad sounding idea on Fenders although this capacitor is good on humbuckers. Just clip it off or desolder it.

lawtone, I appreciate this info because changing pots has been something I've heard about, and even though I absolutely love the tone of my mid-80's Love Rock, I always wonder if it could be even better.

However when I open the control cavity, not only is there no writing on the pots, there seems to be no resistors, capacitors, lugs or whatever - everthing is soldered to an imprinted circuit board.

Anyone else have this situation? Can this be upgraded or swapped out for the more conventional pot set-up? Any reply is appreciated but keep it simple - I'm an electronic illiterate. Just posting here strains my technological skills to the limit.

Novosel,

Personally unless the pots are starting to go I'd leave it alone.
The reason Tokai used PCB's to mount the components is because it's cheaper for production, hand wiring costs money!

BUT cheaper in component mounting does *NOT* mean cheaper sounding, electrons do not care whether they are going across a PCB or through a cable.

The sort of filter effects you get from the passive circuits used in guitars will usually achieve a soft roll off of either the highest or lowest frequencies depending on topology.

Put simply the bass or the brightness can be deminished a little.

There may be instances where the wrong value pots have been used as stated by Lawtone but I would guess this was supplier error to the factory and probably only affects a few guitars, so the chances are you would be replacing like with like.

To really change the quality of sound from your LR I'd suggest a pickup change.

GB

Thanks for the reply, guitarboy! Is there a way to measure the value of a "lugless" pot on a PCB?

novosel,
If your circuit board is like mine the lugs (terminals) are visible. Nonetheless you have to remove the pots or disconnect the pickups to get an accurate reading. If you can see the round metal back of the pot, the ground lug has a wire going from the circuit board that is soldered to the back of the pot itself. On one side of this wire there are two other big solder joints which are the center and outside lugs respectively. On mine the lugs of a standard pot fit right through the circuit board from the back to the solder side. The original pots were just regular pots as well, not PC mount pots. Yours may be different.

My guess is that your pots are probably the right value, but I have 5 old stock Tokais, 79'-82' that had the wrong pots. As guitarboy said it is likely a supplier error, but my guess is there are a lot of early Tokais out there with wrong pots. That's why I posted. Ironically, that's probably why I got the guitars I did. A breezy sound tele with a 1 Meg pot sounds dreadful. Sounds stupendous now.

In my opinion pots do affect tone significantly. To illustrate, set your amp clean, set guitar volume on 10, turn pot down a few notches and listen and you will hear the high end disappear. The only factor changed is that as you turn the pot down, you lessen resistance to ground. Lower resistance = less high end and gain. So if your pot doesn't have as much resistance as it should, your losing high end even with the guitar on full. I'ts as if your guitar volume only goes up to five. Conversely, higher resistance =more high end and gain. That's the Breezy sound story. The difference pots make isn't as noticeable as going from a 5.8k vintage pickup to a 12k overwound one, but it is significant.

I've measured many vintage Fender pots and all were significantly less than 250K. This undoubtedly, along with many other factors, contributes to vintage tone. The effect of pot values is more apparent on single coil pickups as they are more nuanced and subtle.

Printed circuit boards should have no noticeable effect on tone. Theoretically, the circuit board traces that are really close to each other may cause some capacitance, but that's too silly to talk about.

If your Love Rock has good clarity and high end I wouldn't change a thing.
Although on my Humbucker guitars I always disconnect the tone controls, (even if you don't use them they bleed signal to ground), and add a bypass capacitor to make up for the high end loss as I turn the pot down. Great idea for humbuckers, crappy idea for most single coils. I've never seen a Love Rock with bypass capacitor on the circuit board, so I'm not surprised yours didn't have one. Bottom line if it ain't broke..........