Like so much in the guitar world, what suits one player won't neccesarily suit another. That's especially true with how the controls function on your guitar, and you'll find that a certain taper will better achieve what you're looking for. But how do you know which taper that would be?
With volume pots, you can ultimately use linear or logarithmic (audio), so in this article I want to look at why you would choose either spec and what to expect from the results. Pot manufacturers such as CTS, offer distributors a choice of 8 total different tapers when ordering their stock direct from the factory. Linear (50%) and a 'S curve' 50%, and then 7 logarithmic/audio tapers. However, it may be tricky to find all of these taper specs available to purchase, with most retailers not even listing which taper spec the pot is. (Side note, if I list a pot on my website, I'll state which taper it is in an effort to try and help my customers in their guitar modding journey!) Realistically, and somewhat understandably, retailers/distributors likely don't want to stock all of the taper specs when certain tapers suit most of the markets requirements. I certainly can't afford to keep every taper variant for every value on the shelf, and I suspect it would be the same for others too. Let's face it, too many options can be overwhelming so that's likely a contributing factor as well. However, they are offered by CTS and relevant to this article, so I wanted to mention all the different taper specs here for you.
CTS resistance tapers -
Std. D (linear) - 50%
Spl. D - S Curve - 50%
C - 5%
A - 10%
B - 15%
BD - 20%
H - 25%
J - 30%
What do these taper percentages mean? If you take a 500kOhm pot for example, rotate it to exactly halfway then take a reading, and the resistance reads 250kOhm; You have a 'D' 50% linear taper pot. If you have another 500kOhm pot, and at the halfway point the resistance is 50kOhm, then you have an 'A' 10% taper pot. So that percentage equates to what the resistance is at the halfway point. The graph above, supplied by CTS in their 450G series data sheet, is a super helpful visual reference of this with each taper displayed brilliantly well. Initially when looking at this, you'd just think, well, surely linear is the right choice, it goes straight! But it isn't always that simple, sadly.
Signal chain (such as clean, high gain etc) does play a part in this too, as well as treble bleeds as introducing additional caps/resistors to the input and output lugs of your volume pot will drastically alter pot taper, but for now, let's just think about a clean tone for simplicities sake. I'll touch on gain and treble bleeds briefly at the end.
Let's start things off by thinking about how you like to use your volume pot;
1) Do you like a gradual response for the pots 300 degree full rotation? IE, do you like more subtle changes in volume, and are happy to rotate the pot further to obtain a more notable reduction in volume?
2) Or do you like a ‘quick’ response, IE more response with less rotation required? for example if you find doing a volume swell using your pinky really useful and don't want to have to rotate the pot drastically to hear that response.
If you answered a more gradual response throughout the pots rotation, then chances are you will prefer a linear taper volume pot. Or, perhaps an audio taper spec that achieves close to that 50% linear taper, such as a J (30%) or H (25%) for example. So let’s look at which of those may better achieve your volume sweep goal!
Ultimately a linear taper will provide you with more response throughout the full sweep, which on paper (or screen if you will!) sounds really good, surely we would all want that, right? But it's worth some consideration to be certain this is actually right for you. As noted briefly previously, you will find that a linear taper volume pot will provide more subtlety across the full rotation(or at least the majority of it), but you will need to rotate the pot further to achieve more noticeable response. The drop in volume will be subtle, and as human hearing is logarithmic, we may not always hear all of those subtleties.
If you try a linear taper pot and in practice, are finding that you need to rotate the pot a little too much to achieve a noticeable roll off for your preference, then you may want to venture into some of the audio taper specs like the J, H or BD tapers. These behave a little in between linear and logarithmic. They are logarithmic tapers, but with a little more ‘stretched’ out response compared to the more common 10 or 15% log taper specs. So if you tried a linear taper, liked it’s general functionality but disliked how far you needed to turn the pot for a noticeable response, then trying a 30, 25 or 20% logarithmic/audio taper pot will help nudge the response further ‘up’ the rotation so to speak. So you won’t need to rotate it as far as you would with a linear taper.
If you answered for a quicker roll off, IE you love doing quick pinky swells etc, then you'll likely prefer an audio taper pot with something like an 'A' 10%, or 'B' 15% taper. With these specs you'll find that the bulk of the response happens in that upper part of the rotation. Downside is that you will find the lower part of the rotation is fairly unresponsive, you’ll hear some changes as it nears 0, but no where near the response you heard in that upper half. I haven’t personally come across a CTS C 5% taper pot to be able to test one and relay my thoughts here, but I suspect it would be pretty useless in a volume pot position, far too extreme. The CTS A 10% taper is perhaps the most common logarithmic taper available. This will provide you with a very quick initial roll off, great for quick pinky swells, quick volume drops etc which can be helpful in live scenarios for example. If you want to expand the sweep a little more however, but still retain that ‘quick’ roll off feel, then I would recommend a B 15% taper or at a push, the BD 20% taper. 
A little side note for the vintage guitar obsessives that may be reading this. If you love getting the vibe and details right of the 'golden era' of guitar manufacturing, then those old CentraLab pots used on the majority of 50s guitars, had an equivalent 10% audio taper spec. So if your goal is 'vintage' style pot tapers, then grab some CTS 'A' 10% audio taper pots.
Playing clean, with low/mid overdrive, or high metal gain; what taper should I choose?
Gain won't physically change the volume pots taper, but taking into account the change in compression for example, how you perceive the taper may change. For clean, or low/mid overdrive type gain levels, then you have a little more choice available to you. Linear taper, through to more prominent audio tapers will suit this application, so ultimately it comes down to personal preference.
If you're running pretty high gain levels, I'm looking at you metal players, then you may find that an audio taper volume pot will better suit this. With high gain, it may sound as if nothing is happening until much further down the volume pot sweep with a linear taper pot. Resulting in a lot more rotation required to being hearing a noticable difference. Whereas with an audio taper pot, you may hear it clean up a little bit at the upper end of the taper, therefore perceive a more usable volume pot taper too. 
Love using a treble bleed?
Installing a treble bleed (usually a cap, or cap and resistor wired across the input and output lugs) has a definite affect on volume pot taper. For better, or for worse. For many players, a lot of the issue when it comes to volume pot sweep is down to the natural treble 'loss' that happens through the rotation, this can really increase the sense of sudden loss of volume at points in the taper due to the overall tone becoming warmer/muddier. To tackle this, those players will install a treble bleed. Now unfortunately, there are countless ways of installing a treble bleed. Different cap values, resistor values, combinations of how to wire those together such as parallel or series or even both! So this can get pretty messy to be honest. But to put it simply, a treble bleed will definitely influence how a volume pot taper is perceived. Depending on your signal chain, cable length (due to capacitence) and general specs like pickups and pot values, sometimes a treble bleed can seem like it can 'bunch' up the taper, or alter it altogether. So choosing a treble bleed spec that's right for you, can be tricky but worthwhile experimenting with. It may be that you have a particular taper pot that you really like the sweep/response of, but dislike the loss of treble so you simply want to retain that sweep albeit with a little more brightness. Or you may have a pot taper that you just want to influence a little, spread out the response etc. Trial and error realistically may be the only option, there are some useful details that can help reduce the effort. I wrote a dedicated article about treble bleeds a few years back, so for this, I'll point you towards that article HERE.
To try and provide some kind of summary here, treble bleed mods will have an impact on your volume pot taper, for better or for worse so it is worth keeping that in mind if you intend to use a treble bleed alongside your volume pot taper experiments.
There we have it, a little run down of the different CTS pot tapers, and what you should realistically expect from using one in your volume pot position. I hope this helps in some way!
If you'd like to order a new volume pot, please consider doing so from my online store. HERE is the potentiometer collection where you can find a variety of specs to hopefully suit your requirements.
James.
Have you made good use of some of the free resources here? Wired up your guitar or found useful info here along the way? Perhaps you might consider kindly supporting this free resource for guitarists via 'Buy me a coffee'! Unlike many websites these days, I don't use any generative AI when writing these articles. All of the words are typed up by me, based on my experiences working on guitars over the years. Out of respect for my website visitors and blog readers, I feel this is the only approach to take, and I do hope you found my writings of some help in your guitar modding journey.