Volume pot

The potentiometer that controls how much of the pickups' signal leaves the guitar, and the single most useful control on an electric instrument.

Its value is part of the circuit's tone, since it loads the pickup and shifts the resonant peak, so a 500 kilo-ohm pot sounds brighter than a 250 in the same guitar. Its taper decides how the travel feels: an audio-taper pot gives a smooth, usable spread where a linear one does most of its work in the last fraction of a turn. Because it is passive, turning it down also changes the tone slightly, which players use deliberately.

Example: rolling the volume down on an overdriven amplifier cleans the sound up rather than merely making it quieter.

Volume pot

See also