How do you use your Guitar tone Pot?

[iekobrid]

Re: How do you use your Guitar tone Pot?

When I'm going for a smooth, sustained, semi-distorted violin-y single note lead sound, I'll roll the tone all the way off in the M+B position on my strat.

Other than that, the only time I touch a tone knob is on the Flying V I wired all kinds of wrong and the tone pots ended up acting more like coil splits. Which, considering that the volume pots actually ARE push-pull coil splits (but NOT volume controls), makes for an interesting enough range of sounds that I never bothered to fix it. :banana:

 

[itbepopples]

Re: How do you use your Guitar tone Pot?

I saw Stratman approach his tone pots very differently than I do.

He dials it all the way down dark, the brings it back up until he gets what he's after. I have always done the opposite, just turned them down to take the edge off.

After my last few wanking sessions, I'm now a convert to his way of doing it. It seems easier on my ears to add in what I want instead of taking away what I don't want.

Just food for thought. Many of you probably already do it that way.

I've done it like that for as long as I remember. I first turn it up all the way just to see where I can go with it but then I go all the way down and slowly ease it up. It keeps me from putting too much treble in my signal.

 

[Boogie Bill]

Re: How do you use your Guitar tone Pot?

My take is that you should run your guitar's tone controls full on, setting your amp for the maximum amount of treble you need, and then rolling off your guitar's tone for darker tones. This should give you maximum signal-to-noise ratio. That's the theory, anyway. High treble at the guitar--then turn the treble down at the amp to reduce noise.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

I actually use my tone controls a lot, but my guitars have tone controls that actually work!

I like the G&L Legacy, S-500 and Comanche--these strat-style guitars use a Leo Fender-designed Passive Treble and Bass (PTB) control system. It's a passive system--no batteries required,; and it gives you a ton of flexibility with a Treble and Bass control on the guitar. I "normal" my control with the T=10, B=5 for a bright, "poppy" "Robert Cray" clean tone--great for rhythm, with a lot of spank. For darker, jazzier stylings--I can roll the PTB Treble to 5. If I want more "punch" on a solo, I just roll the PTB Bass up to 10.

And the G&L PTB system is GLOBAL--it works on ALL of the pickups--in ALL positions of the selector switch. No more, "too bright to use bridge pickup". It is definitely one of Leo Fender's better ideas.

And it works even better on the guitars with the hot pickups, like the S-500 or the Comanche. The S-500s have high-output MFD single coils; those Z-Coils on the Comanche are MFD humbuckers with zero noise. Both have high output; both have high-fidelity wide-range frequency response. The PTB works great on these guitars. My favorite trick is to hit a note that is on the verge of feedback and actually "dial in" the harmonic with the PTB.

I sold my 1960 vintage Strat about 15 years ago and replaced it with the Legacys, with absolutely no regrets. The tone controls on a Strat seem very limited in comparison.

Bill

 

[Skarekrough]

Re: How do you use your Guitar tone Pot?

looks like it might be rather style-dependant.

I've found the same....

When I was playing high-gain stuff I had no need for tone pots.

For all my Blues stuff, the first time I turned a tone knob on my Tele it all made sense. Now I spend as much time tweaking tone knobs as I do volume or any other aspect.

 

[Guitar Toad]

Re: How do you use your Guitar tone Pot?

My strat bridge sounds great with the tone rolled part way and all the way down. I think all the guys that say they hate the tone of their strat bridge pickup are crazy. They need to put a tone control on the bridge pup if they don't have one and use it. Crank your amp and roll the tone off and you can get some sweet mid-rangy smokey blues tones from the strat bridge. Great tones come from the strat bridge with the tone rolled off. It's especially good with a DS-1 booster. I could probably live with the 5-way swtich stuck on the bridge position. The strat bridge is great and better with a tone control.

If you haven't tried it you really need to.

And, I haven't read through the whole thread so forgive me, but, have you seen how much SRV used his tone and volume controls. He was alway messin with them. It's definitely something that has to be learned.

 

[Stratman]

Re: How do you use your Guitar tone Pot?

Who's the girl, Stratman?

Just another lady friend :smokin:

I never remember their names in the morning... :smack:

 

[Stratman]

Re: How do you use your Guitar tone Pot?

My take is that you should run your guitar's tone controls full on, setting your amp for the maximum amount of treble you need, and then rolling off your guitar's tone for darker tones. This should give you maximum signal-to-noise ratio. That's the theory, anyway. High treble at the guitar--then turn the treble down at the amp to reduce noise.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

I actually use my tone controls a lot, but my guitars have tone controls that actually work!

I like the G&L Legacy, S-500 and Comanche--these strat-style guitars use a Leo Fender-designed Passive Treble and Bass (PTB) control system. It's a passive system--no batteries required,; and it gives you a ton of flexibility with a Treble and Bass control on the guitar. I "normal" my control with the T=10, B=5 for a bright, "poppy" "Robert Cray" clean tone--great for rhythm, with a lot of spank. For darker, jazzier stylings--I can roll the PTB Treble to 5. If I want more "punch" on a solo, I just roll the PTB Bass up to 10.

And the G&L PTB system is GLOBAL--it works on ALL of the pickups--in ALL positions of the selector switch. No more, "too bright to use bridge pickup". It is definitely one of Leo Fender's better ideas.

And it works even better on the guitars with the hot pickups, like the S-500 or the Comanche. The S-500s have high-output MFD single coils; those Z-Coils on the Comanche are MFD humbuckers with zero noise. Both have high output; both have high-fidelity wide-range frequency response. The PTB works great on these guitars. My favorite trick is to hit a note that is on the verge of feedback and actually "dial in" the harmonic with the PTB.

I sold my 1960 vintage Strat about 15 years ago and replaced it with the Legacys, with absolutely no regrets. The tone controls on a Strat seem very limited in comparison.

Bill

I also own a Legacy Special and found the bass and treble tone controls really work well. Much better than on a Fender Strat0caster.

However, what Scott did not say is that I was using his EJ Strat at the time... Lovely playing and tonal guitar with a slightly orange tint to the neck..

 

[V-Spot]

Re: How do you use your Guitar tone Pot?

Pot is always at a minimum.

I have spoken.

 

[clint_41]

Re: How do you use your Guitar tone Pot?

i fried my tone pot a little when doing the electronics in my warmoth (it was some of my first experiences with a soldering iron let alone wiring a guitar) and so its a tricky tone pot now. it has a very gradual decrease in trebel frequency from 10 to about 4 on the knob, and then a very quick roll of of trebel between 4 and 1. so i tend to not play with it too much, because it either hardly changes the sound at all, or changes it way more than i want it to. eventually i will get myself a new tone pot and replace it, but for now i can rock with the fried one.

 

[Artie]

Re: How do you use your Guitar tone Pot?

I was one of those people who never used the tone control, and also, barely ever used distortion, because it sounded so "fizzy" and thin. What I have since discovered is, any time I use distortion, the tone goes down to zero, or close to it. Distortion "clips" the waveform, thus generating high order harmonics. If you roll back the tone, you substitute those for the natural ones rather than adding them in.

Works great for me. I guess this might be what they mean by "woman tone".

Artie

 

[Butch Snyder]

Re: How do you use your Guitar tone Pot?

I don't even have a tone control. If I did, it's always full on...