Guitar Tone Controls

[marnold]

I alter the perception of reality among the listeners by removing my footwear and letting the odor modulate their thought processes...

Just as an aside, allow me to compliment you on your grasp of the English language. I enjoy a good turn of the phrase and that was definitely one. It was very silly too, which makes it even better.

 

[deeaa]

Well thank you very much Marnold, I very much appreciate it! You know, for me one of the biggest benefits to frequenting TheFret is getting to practice my use of colloquial and conversational English, maybe even attempt a pun now and then. I seldom get to use the language freely in my daily life, despite the fact I educate people in hospitality&catering English use for living, LOL.
The students by and large aren't sufficiently competent for me to be able to lecture in English, it's more like instruction on vocabulary use and such.

 

[mw13068]

You can get even more from your Strat by doing a simple mod. Disconnect the middle pickup lead from the tone pot, and instead connect the bridge pickup lead there instead. It will open up the sound from the middle pickup and take a bit of the ice pick off the bridge pickup. The bridge with the tone rolled down, depending on what you use, can sound like a humbucker or a P90 pickup. Pretty cool. You'll still get tone control for all pickups in positions 2 and 5.

I just bought a second-hand Lace Sensor (blue, gold, red) pickguard with 1M pots that was wired this way. I was figuring on rewiring to suggested Lace specs, but maybe I'll keep it this way for a while and see.

Currently the red bridge pickup doesn't scream quite as much as I'd like. I'm wondering if it would be better without a tone circuit.

 

[Brian Krashpad]

"10" is pretty much the "default" tone setting for my guitars, but I will back off that as needed, quite regularly.

The exception for 10 being the default being my T-60 and T-40, because on those the tone control also functions as a coil split. So if I want them functioning as humbuckers, the pickups can only be set to about 7. After that, they become singles.

 

[Eric]

"10" is pretty much the "default" tone setting for my guitars, but I will back off that as needed, quite regularly.

Even on your tele(s)? From my experience with them and what I've heard/read, teles seem to work best when you start at 5 and go from there. Just curious how you handled it, since you seem to A) have a predilection for humbuckers and B) play a good bit of rock music.

 

[FusedGrooves]

My yamaha SA2200 has the alnico v pups so I can have all humbuckers, all single coils or a mix. When in the middle switch position I like to mix both single coil and humbuckers sounds together, when I want to change the sound not only do I use the tone control alot but also use the seperate volume controls that each pup has so the neck or bridge pups can be made slightly louder/softer and am amazed by some of the sounds I am getting from her, simply brilliant!

 

[deeaa]

My yamaha SA2200 has the alnico v pups so I can have all humbuckers, all single coils or a mix. When in the middle switch position I like to mix both single coil and humbuckers sounds together, when I want to change the sound not only do I use the tone control alot but also use the seperate volume controls that each pup has so the neck or bridge pups can be made slightly louder/softer and am amazed by some of the sounds I am getting from her, simply brilliant!

Ah! That's something I always like to do when I want to change my tone some. I even have this guitar that has no switches at all, just volumes, so I can seamlessly slide from sound to sound, and I used to always play with both buckers on. These days I've gone mostly for a more simple rock tone and use the bridge pup, but I used to always mix in some single-coil as well. The only reason I don't much no more is I don't have that option on all my guitars and it'd be too much work and costs to install a single on all of them as well, so instead I just modded my sound from the pedals some, and now only use the bridge pup for simplicity.

But, still, when recording, I like to find the best sound first by mixing several pickups together rather than guitar tone.

 

[rylanmartin]

I have two comments:

1. I used the tone control a lot when playing live with other guitar players. The other guy goes to take a solo, I roll my tone waaaay back and he cuts through the mix a lot better and nobody notices my playing has fallen back in the mix. I find it gives the band room to move.

2. Has anyone tried the new Taylor solid body electric guitars? The tone knobs on those babies are pretty cool. It's like a normal tone knob when you roll back to about halfway; it's cutting the highs. Then from the halfway point it starts cutting the lows AND the highs and you're left with this mid hump that sounds more like a parked wah pedal, and not so much like a muddy tone control. It's perfect for "La Grange" type tones. I wanna wire some of my guitars to do that!

 

[MAXIFUNK]

On any guitar I own the bridge pickup tone knob is always in use set to 10 is just to harsh to my ears.

On my SSS Strat's I seem to never go lower than 7 or 8 on the neck pickup sounds to muddy to me past that point the same goes for the middle pickup.

If I want a deeper tone I tend to tweak the amp to obtain that deep growl if that's what I want.

Since I finally figured out the volume knob plays a major part in dirty, crunch, or clean sound with a responsive tube amp I tweak the volume knob way more than I did say this time last year. I am still learning its a work in progress maybe this time next year I will start not to suck to my ears. One can hope although I do see progress I must admit.