CTS 500k Audio Pot, Split Shaft, 3/4" Thread Length, for Les Paul, 12-Pack

This is a 12-pack of our CT-4517 pots, packed in a protective box.

This pot has an extra-long 3/4" threaded bushing for guitars with thick tops, such as carved-top Les Paul Standards, where a shorter bushing may leave too little thread for the nut and washer.

The best guitar pots we're aware of are made by CTS - this is the brand that pretty much every American guitar company has used for decades. We order most of our pots directly from CTS and have them made to our specs.

Mounting hardware included for every pot (shown in the last photo).

Specs

• 500k audio taper (logarithmic)
• 10% resistance tolerance (the tightest CTS offers)
• Split shaft, 24 teeth (for push-on knobs)
• 3/8-32 SAE bushing thread
• 3/4" thread length (thick-top rear-routed guitars)
• Flat back (Gibson style)
• Snap ring keeps the pot from being pushed apart
• 15/16" body diameter

Details

In 1977, on carved-top Les Pauls such as the Standard, Deluxe, and Custom, Gibson introduced a new production technique. They began mounting the pots and capacitors to a metal plate, and then these parts - including the plate - were installed into the guitar as a unit. This allowed some of the soldering and mechanical assembly to take place outside the guitar, and the plate also acted as a convenient ground plane.

The plate also became one side of a metal box, as a top section was slid into place over the pots and caps and was screwed to the plate, forming a Faraday cage around the pots and caps. A Faraday cage is a box that provides comprehensive shielding against certain types of hum, such as EMI (Electromagnetic Interference) and RFI (Radio Frequency Interference). In this way the plate served the purpose of easing assembly as well as protecting against hum, but the added plate required that the pots have longer threaded bushings than normal. If your guitar has one of these plates, these pots are the right length to properly work with it, and we give you the added hardware required in order to mount the pots first to the plate, and then to secure the complete assembly inside the guitar's control cavity.

A snap ring at the top of the shaft keeps the pot from being pushed apart. Standard CTS pots can have their backs pushed off when the wrong knobs are forced on, which is a common problem.