I have now come full circle

[NegativeEase]

The thing is . . . there comes a point where it's easier to change the tone with your fingers than by twiddling knobs and flicking switches.

Like if my neck pickup sounds boomy, I move my picking hand back a bit further towards the bridge. Tone adjusted. If I want a snappier attack when doing funk rhythm I relax the hold on my pick and angle it so it slides differently than I would for regular lead playing. Tone adjusted. This works best with single coil pickups for me, because I find it's always easier to back the tone off and to kill highs than try to add them . . . but you can probably make it work for any pickup and amp combo.

:P

You are not wrong, but few here are ready to accept the power of the tone control from your fingas!


to further this -I move between picking and hybrid picking and full fingers on different passages in the same song to further control the tone,the attack, the sustain, the vibe etc.

[Chistopher]

Even simple stuff like adjusting how hard you hit the individual strings can make a difference. Too much bass? Don't hit the E and A strings as hard.

[Aceman]

I have a couple Swiss Army switchers...But I am a 90% Bridge and vol/tone on 10 guy.

I like messing around with them at home, but I've never goofed with live sound like that.

[Wolfshead]

Yeah, and the same applies to trying different pickups all the time. I use two settings - bridge or neck pickup, and whatever pickups are in the guitar when I buy it generally stay there.

[Seashore]

Simpler is better for me. I'm more comfortable using footswitches and just building my tones out of what I get from the bridge pickup than I am adjusting stuff on the guitar while I'm playing. I guess that's from doing vocals while I play. I have several guitars with the bridge pickup wired straight to the jack (which I really like in darker guitars) and never feel like I'm lacking for sounds. Occasionally when I'm recording I'll be like "oh, the neck pickup would be cool for this part", but it's never a deal breaker.

Having said that, this LP I just got has (among other things) a battery-powered boost on a toggle switch, and there's something appealing about it. It sounds very good. I may try it for my lead parts instead of using an OD, and just have a delay pedal in the loop. Then I won't need my channel switcher (I can just switch to the rolled off neck pickup for clean sounds) and I won't need any of this 4-cable-method stuff, and I can be the mini-board dweeb I've always known I was inside.

[Phantasmagoria]

Yeah I would always wire mine for coil splitting with a push pull, but now I could'nt be bothered . Most pup's sound like ass when split anyway...

The only fiddly guitar I now have is my Schecter Sun Valley Super Shredder with the Sustainiac which came stock. That's the only one where I've got to keep flipping switches around to activate/kill the perpetual squealies

A fun guitar to play though.

[chadd]

I like having splits on guitars for versatility on stage, but for recording purposes prefer to swap guitars. A split humbucker on a Les Paul is good enough for me live, but if I want a stratty neck, I'm reaching for a strat any time I have the chance. I got pretty good at swapping during fade outs or intros, but sometimes it isn't worth the hassle.