ok so title basically says it all. recently aquired a 2011 white gibson sg standard. it had the pcb thing so i got some caps and pots and everything.---cts short shaft. but when i put everything in the new pots are a little short so with my volume and tone nobs on, they kinda rub on the body where as with my other 16' standard they sit off the body ever so slightly. anybody know what the dealio is? thanks in advance
Are the knobs the same? I know for a fact there's two types of Gibson knobs; ones that go deep on the end of the pot and almost touch the body, and others (vintage style) that sit higher up. If the knobs are the same, that's weird. Short shaft pots have always worked on my SGs.
You can also pull the knobs out slightly without harming anything. one millimeter would probably be enough. Short shaft pots are supposed to work, and on all my guitars, they do. I am not a Les Paul guy. The pot shaft itself has adjusting nuts on it. if it's too short, you can remove the nut from between the pot and the guitar top, and substitute a thin washer. That will give you more play.
In addition to removing adjusting nut as mentioned in above post, if you see metal tabs sticking up on the pot casing, break them off with needle nose pliers. This will allow the pot to sit flush inside the control cavity. You should then have enough shaft length for the knob. The image below is a long shaft pot for reference only. The short shaft pots I have used recently have the same tabs.
yeah guys no tabs both have 3/8 threads and i wasnt using the nut between the pot and the body. it actually looks as though on the gibson pot the part that the nob sits on is just a smidge taller. hopefully you can see. also the switch craft imput jack i got barely fit. the gibson one had much taller threads.
You could always fill the knob hole at the end with something as a shim on the other end to get them to the height you like. Paper or a cut up business card packed in there with something long and pointy should work (pencil end maybe?). Might be a royal pain to get them out later mind you, but should work failing swapping out the pots again. Not pretty, but no one will know superficially but you, unless someone has the inclination to take the knob off and check inside the hole for a shim (why would anyone do that?). The obvious downside to this aside from having shims inside the knob, would of course be the reduced surface area for contact to the shaft. If this is only a couple of mm that should really be negligible.
It does appear the splines are taller on one of the shafts from your images. I was looking at mine and they seem to vary in height but none are rubbing on the wood, in which case I would then be concerned. OCD.
yeah see my other sg looks like those pictures. but this one with the cts pots the nobs are literally on the body. just seems weird because i put cts in my other sg. im wondering now if theres just big inconsistencies in the way their shafts are made
i know in some 2000s models the horns a thicker then the current line of SG standards but could it be that the bodies were thicker as well?
