one of my volume knobs on my ibanez (ART120, from around 2009-2010) is loose and cuts off the sound on and off. I looked up replacement parts on their website and I need an IBANEZ Poti A50K potentiometer which is discontinued and seems to be unavailable on my region.
what should i do?
Is it just the nut that’s loose or is it the shaft in the pot that’s loose? CTS and Bourns make good quality pots. you would probably need to take it out and get the pot size and shaft size and length. you can get them on amazon or ebay. you need to know how to solder to replace it. A50K is audio taper 50k ohms. Or take it to a luthier I wouldn’t think they would charge to much to change it.
Dave
by loose i mean it can rotate 360 degrees. which i think applys to the shaft itself
Volume and tone pots are pretty straight forward. If you aren’t inclined to do it yourself, a local luthier or guitar shop tech will be able to put a new one in pretty easily. If they can’t find the exact one, there are a lot of potential substitutes.
If you do it yourself, you can look at any supplier like Sweetwater, or even Amazon.
All you need is the same size and value. The most important part is to make sure the shaft is the same size so you can fit it through the same mounting hole and your old knob fits.
Occasionally the body will be bigger or smaller as well, so make sure there is room in the cavity for it too.
Edit: 50k seems small. Most are 250k or 500k. Are you sure 50k is correct?
This is what it says here:
I am unsure if it is A50K or B50K though.
So the volume pot is B50k and the tone pot is A50k.
My understanding is that B means linear and A means logarithmic.
Are you confident enough to open your guitars body cavity and solder a new one in?
If not, just take it to someplace with a guitar tech. Even a Guitar Center or similar should have no issue and easy replacements on hand.
If you can do it yourself, you need to know which one it is and make sure you measure the neck and shaft so you can buy something that has the same value and fits the hole and knob.
If you lived in Denver, I could do it for you.
If the nut holding the pot is loose it could seem like it’s turning farther but the whole pot is turning and shorting a lug to ground. causing it to cut out. does the guitar have batteries then the 50k wouldn’t be odd, it would have active electronics. usually humbuckers use 500k and single coils use 250k not sure about p90’s.
Dave
It is indeed active pickups. I eventually decided to take the guitar to a tech.
thanks fo all the help!
apperantly he couldn’t find anywhere 50k pots with the right shaft length. he used 250k and said i should be fine if i keep the tone maxed. he also agreed to replace it for free if i somehow aquired the right pot.
Is it realy ok to use 250k for the tone instead 50k?
Shouldn’t hurt anything but may change the sound and not have any tone control. you can put resisters from each outside leg to the center to make it a 50k. not sure of the value, maybe try 80k or so and measure it with a ohms meter.
Dave
The tone knob is a low pass filter. I can’t calculate yours without the value of the capacitor. But, it might be the difference of rolling off down to say 2-3000 hz with a 50k vs down to 5-600 hz with a 250k.
So if you turn your tone knob all the way, it is going to sound super dull. If you barely tweak your tone knob (using only the 1st 5th of its rotation) it will be the same.
Amazon has a billion of these pots. How hard is it to match your neck and shaft size?