Potentiometers – Modifying Taper

One thing to keep in mind when doing this is that you can modify the voltage taper when the pot is used as a voltage divider, but the pot will then have a different total resistance depending on where it is set. That means the pot will load down the previous gain stage differently than a true log taper pot. This might mean you need a bigger coupling capacitor too.

If you are trying to make a variable resistor with a different taper out of a linear pot and some resistors, the only one you can make is a reverse log taper. That makes this technique more useful for volume and gain controls but less so for most tone controls.

What a crazy coincidence for me. Only today I received a pack of resistors and capacitors in order to experiment on this very thing. I was trying to help my nephew with a basic electronics kit and we found the pot we added didn't have the linear characteristics we were hoping for. Rather than swap it out I was determined to understand where I went wrong.