100k inplace of a 500k?

[solderburn]

Hello this is my first post!

I tonight I am going to build a Octavia, I was reviewing my parts and discovered that I accidentally ordered a 100k instead of a 500k volume pot. My question is can I use the 100k for now and buy the 500k next time I order parts? Or will it explode or do something of that nature. Or just sound like diarrhea.  Please help!

[LucifersTrip]

you'll probably get a a bit of a volume & base decrease....

[solderburn]

Could I just remove the pot and have no volume control?

[duck_arse]

no volume control is not recommended. it will be too loud. you could try with the 100k pot, find a volume that you can stick with, and then measure the resistance from the wiper to each end of the pot. multply both readings by 5, then use the nearest value fixed resistors to replace the 100k pot.

or just use the 100k pot.

[Thecomedian]

when you put on a larger volume pot, highs are "preserved", while overall voltage is lowered. That's how it seems to work for my guitar. went from 500k to 1m and got more highs, but it's much quieter, especially as you turn the volume down.

its a whole balancing act with voltage and current. if you go with a lower pot, and you still want highs, a bypass cap can be used. If you have a higher pot and too much high, a bleed cap can be used.

I loaded one of my effect pedals in LTspice and changed the "volume pot" to 100k, and it makes voltage higher, and possibly can introduce distortion or maybe distort your distortion beyond what you wanted from the pedal, since current and voltage are tied together and lower resistance = more current.

[solderburn]

Thanks for the input, finished it last night with the 100k and the low end sounds good but high end sounds pretty thin.
Next week or two I'll order the 500k and see what it sounds like.

[Jdansti]

Just curious - while waiting for the proper pot if a treble bleed cap on the 100k would help-just like on a guitar volume control.

[Thecomedian]

yep, but depending on the circuit you might want a bigger or smaller cap. it goes to ground and bleeds off highs, or bypasses volume control and keeps highs. some pedals have very tiny bleeds, most have no bleeds. use them to bypass highs around a transistor so that they aren't gained as much as mid/lows.

If you know about how the capacitance in series or parallel with resistance affects higher frequencies, you can calculate it out. Otherwise, just switch caps until it sounds fine.