Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Guitars, Amps and Effects => Topic started by: CaptainDesslock on December 17, 2009, 02:41:35 PM
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I am curious,
Do you guys use like all the magic buttons on your guitar? Do you actually bother to swivel the magic tone dial around every once in a while? Do you switch between pickups multiple times per song? Do you ever roll of the volume?
When I first started guitar I never bothered to notice these things, the volume was always max, never touched the tone knob and just fiddled with the pickup selector ignorantly. It wasn't until after I started my "I wanna sound like the Edge," phase that i realized that lowly tone knob I never used could make the sound more bright and jangly......same thing with the pickup selector, playing on cheap squires for a long time their sure as hell isn't much of a difference between pickups but when I payed attention I bothered to notice the subtleties.
What say you?
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It depends alot...
On humbucker guitars I don't touch the tone too much, or flick between bridge and neck. On my strats I do all these things, and on my mini-humbucker equipped Les Paul. Also if using a real amp, rather than my Sansamp I tend to use controls alot more. I do use my volume control rolled down to get cleans. I realise more and more I prefer to have some brightness in hand, especially on the neck. Come to think of it, I do use the controls alot on my Riff Raff Flying V too.
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Well... When I only had my Custom 24 with it's ***y stock X2Ns pups and braindead treble bleed, I never used neither the tones nor the volumes pots. But I did use the other controls (pup selector and serie/parallel switch mainly) depending on the song and amp (used to play on whatever amp was available by that time, only got me a half-decent one a few month before the band split and I stopped playing guitar for almost 15 years...).
Now I have good pups and a somehow better amp, I find find myself using more and more the volume pot on the Custom 24 (humbuckers). Since I have a Tele, I start using the tone pot quite a lot too. And when playing my other (strat-like) Vox, I do for sure use the switch quite a few times in a song.
I guess that yes, it first has to do with better gear that react more and more appropriately to these controls. But it probably also has to do with me being a little less of a motorhead/speed-freak than I used to be :mrgreen:
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On my Telecaster loads, volume swells, tone swells, change pickup all the time and tone to suit. I even gi the Callaham heavy knurl knobs just so I could grip them well for quick changes...
On my 335 not so much, VVTT configuration is too much to tweak on the fly, partially because they are too far out of veiw. Might even convert that guitar to master tone and volume.... and then out some Tele knobs on!
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use pickup selector most, volume loads and tone never
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Yep, always playing about. Both volumes and tones, although I could live with a master tone
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Nope, not at all. In fact, most of my guitars have no tone or volume controls whatsoever.
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I only use my Kaoss Pad!
PDT_019 PDT_028 PDT_006
(I couldn't resist and I'm sorry)
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Nope, not at all. In fact, most of my guitars have no tone or volume controls whatsoever.
poseur PDT_008
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Tone never. None of my custom guitars have tone controls & I've removed them from several of my other guitars.
Volume rarely. Sometimes I might wind it down to get a semi-clean sound on my amp's gain channel, but that's not often - I have a clean channel for that :)
Selector yes, although I hardly ever use the "middle" position on 2H guitars. I could probably get by with a simple neck/bridge 2-position switch if such a thing exists, although I quite like the sound of a split & parallel neck pickup too...
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Pickup selector? Not that often. Although several of my guitars only have one pickup :lol: I'm very much a bridge pickup guy though, so even when I have a neck pickup I don't use it very often.
Volume and tone controls I use constantly, on all of my guitars *
(* slight exception being my Epi SG which is only used for DC gigs and in an Angus style lives with the tone control on full. The volume control still gets used a heck of a lot though.)
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Depends on the guitar. I'm on the bridge position 99% of the time unless I'm doing something clean then I'm in the middle position with the tone rolled off a little. I use the volume all the time as a gain control.
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1 channel amp so I use them all the time.
I'm thinking of getting a blower switch installed to bypass the settings dialled in on the pickups and cut straight to everything on 10
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Nope, not at all. In fact, most of my guitars have no tone or volume controls whatsoever.
poseur PDT_008
OUCH! :)
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Most of my guitars dont have a tone control
I use the volume as an on/off switch. (95% of the time)
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All the time, especially on a strat or tele, but I do use them an awful lot on humbucker geetars as well.
I did grow up playing a strat through a single channel valve amp though - mebbe using all the controls is kinda ingrained in me now :lol:
I set my amps for "crunch" at about 7 on the guitar vol and 6-7 on the tone... then take it away from there.
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I only use my Kaoss Pad!
PDT_019 PDT_028 PDT_006
(I couldn't resist and I'm sorry)
hardee har har...mine has a fuzz factory remember?
though now that I think about it, I probably will have to order another with a kaoss pad :P
continuing on topic.........................
As it stands atm I really like the MQ for the mids and the highs, and the NB for that kaboom bottom...I really don't ever use the volume control, its always at max, maybe a product of my products I think. If I want more or less gain I leave that to stompboxes.
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When I'm playing metal, the volume is either full or zero, and I play 95% of the time on the bridge. More neck use at home, recording though, as is often the case.
Playing any other genre, I use the volume and tone controls tons, and all pickups.
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outta curiosity what do you play outside of metal?
I don't mean that in a negative way, your just our resident metalhead so I'm curious...are you secretly a bebop jazz musician? :P
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I use tone, vol and selector a lot more now than I did 20 years ago.
My Yam SG with Mules sounds amazing with a little grit, a tremolo pedal, and the volume and tone rolled off a little on the back puckup.
Switch between bridge and bridge/neck on my tele a lot.
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I put guitar volume & tone to just over half-way then set the amp to suit. For there I constantly adjust the volume and tone depending on what my ears tell me. I almost never leave the bridge pickup for live playing. With all the other instrument competing for frequency, the bridge cuts through most. For recording or solo practice, I often use the middle and neck position.
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I used volume and pickup selector on the Strats but rarely the tone. Use Vol and tone plus pickup selector a lot on my Tele. On the 339 I am still feeling my way but so far I have been using all controls-there is no loss of top end when the volume is reduced.
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sometimes. depends on the guitar, amp, pedals and what type of music i'm playing.
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I use them much more when playing live and much more when playing clean.
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I never touch the tone dial, and tend to rip the pots off from my guitars. My band plays pretty straight out metal, but I do fiddle with volume in almost every song. Neck pup for some soloing and cleans.
I also have two guitars with piezos, both have two vol pots (piezo+magnetic) and no tone pots. Neither have switches for going between magnetic and piezo pups, so if I want to switch between the two, I have to turn the mag volume down, piezo up and vice versa. Quite a hassle tbh :P
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I change pickups a lot, especially playing blues on a Strat or Tele, but also flip about on humbucker-loaded guitars, mostly for solos.
I use the volume control a lot when playing through my valve amp, less so when using my old solid-state Laney. Don't use the tone controls much, but when I do I'm glad I have them. I wouldn't for a minute consider getting rid of them.
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I tend to use the volume and tone controls a lot as I've always preferred to set my amp to "the most I'm going to want" and then use the guitar's volume to clean things up and the tone to balance whatever the current volume level is. I think that really works for me because I only have single channel, Class A valve amps and guitars with single coils.
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tone knob... what's that do? never use it, as for the volume knob, only use I might get out of it is roll back for metal intro/interlude riff with distorted chords so they ain't complete mush
as for the selector switch it's simple
rhythm = bridge
lead = neck
clean = both
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I'm fairly old-school when it comes to playing and have got comfortable with the twin volume and tone arrangement on my Les Paul, so much so that the only Tele that really works for me is the '72 Tele Custom (the Keef one).
There is just so much variation and nuance you can get with those four pots - I adjust the volume alot to vary the gain throughout a song when gigging.
The Tele is especially great for this as its quite fat on full volume, but roll back the volume to 7 and its more of a traditional Tele tone. On full, its really pokey.
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I honestly do not see any point in having a tone control on a guitar
guitars always sound better with the controls flat out and all the tone shaping done in a tube preamp
if I want to change sounds then I've got a huge MIDI rig and FX processors up the ying yang, I don't really need a 10 pence capacitor to mess my guitar sound up
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I'd use all three nearly constantly. Worryingly, I'll even do so when I'm not plugged in. I guess I just got used to it when I sacked all my pedals.
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I honestly do not see any point in having a tone control on a guitar
guitars always sound better with the controls flat out and all the tone shaping done in a tube preamp
if I want to change sounds then I've got a huge MIDI rig and FX processors up the ying yang, I don't really need a 10 pence capacitor to mess my guitar sound up
If you were running a guitar straight into a vintage voiced valve amp, you'd see why a tone control can be very useful ;)
I can see why, with your rig, you see it's unnecessary though!
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I honestly do not see any point in having a tone control on a guitar
If you were running a guitar straight into a vintage voiced valve amp, you'd see why a tone control can be very useful ;)
Even with a couple OD / dist pedals in between FWIW. Now I noticed that I used the tone quite a lot with single-coils, and way less with 'buckers - and from the posts in this thread, it seems there's a kind of pattern here...
My 2 cents...
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Depends on the guitar I am playing.
My Esquire is nice as I use the controls as pre-sets on the switch.
My two Squier 51s dont have tone controls, so I use the switch quite a bit.
LP Jnr gets both the volume and tone used a lot.
My other Tele has a 4 way switch so I'm often making use of that, so I dont use the tone and volume so much. The series position gives me a big boost in volume if I need it.
Having said that I did once build an Esquire with no controls at all, and had the pickup wired straight to the jack. Fun for a while, but I soon added controls.
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I use volume, tone controls, and where relevant pick-up selector too.
I've been using a one pickup guitar for the last year or so so pick-up selection has been not an option!
I've now got my Strat back so obviously I can (and do) use the different pick-up option with this.
I did a gig a few weeks ago with a 60s Gretsch 6120, which has slightly "eccentric" controls that I am not 100% au fait with. So I only dared manipulate the master volume control. I still managed to knock the tone switch onto the "jazz" setting which caused me some confusion until I work out what had happened!
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I only use the Tone when I play the Comfortably Numb solo, other times I use my Indie and it only has a volume, but has a coil-tap so I use a few times.
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outta curiosity what do you play outside of metal?
I don't mean that in a negative way, your just our resident metalhead so I'm curious...are you secretly a bebop jazz musician? :P
Lots of (very poor) jazz, country and blues.
I played in wedding and function bands for a long time, most of it's mince but it does steer you towards some cool stuff which I've investigated further over the years.
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Volume - a lot, about 1 in 5 songs I'd say.
Tone - almost never.
Still important, as I find the treble end sounds to thin without a tone pot.
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I have a Gretsch with plenty of knobs and switches. I only use the master volume to fade out or clean things up slightly. I only use the 1st position of the tone switch for the intro of White Room. The induvidual volume knobs are just there for the dice knobs. :D
On the Esquire I have the tone rolled off a notch. I use the tone bypass when I need to cut through in a bright, trebly and twangy way. I use the 'honky tone' when I want a half wah sound and that's not too often.
On the Yammy SG everything is cranked.
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For the Jazz 'project' - and most other stuff, very little control usage really.
My 'to go' preference being middle toggle ( i.e both pickups on together on a Gibson or Gibson style guitar ) - and all guitar controls on full, with herbs and spices added or subtracted later. I.e. Monster 'Jazz ' and B.K.P. heavy celluloid if I want subtle / sweet attenuation to match Tape wound 'Swing' strings - or Cleartone cables and Dunlop '205'picks for the assertive Be-Bop round wound strings .
Having said that, this is not currently a gigging set up ; but I prefer to control tone, volume and dynamics from the hands / pick anyway. When last gigging with Strat and Tele, in the context of a 7 piece band, I still prefered to let the signal leave the guitar nice and 'spanky' - then out board clean boost for solos and crunchy 50's / 60's style Soul and R&B riffs - especially as our Bass player had an active / humbuckered Bass , which produced high quality wool . :)
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Post deleted.
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Used to only use my pickup selector....slight vol/tone usage....recent times using everything
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I used to be a player that preferred guitars with just a volume pot - Charvel style
On LP type guitars I never bothered touching te tone controls - other than to butcher Gary Moore intros
BUT - on recent builds I started using better capacitors (in my case the Vitamin Q) along with pots that had a great taper to their resistance track and I was amazed at how subtle and usable I found the tone controls.
So now I use the tone a lot more.
Watching Dave Meniketti from Y&T get so many tones from his LP with gentle tweaks of the vol and tone and pickup selector may have been inspiring too!
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I think I use the tone pot about as often as I use the floppy disk drive in my computer, about once every five years. Surprised the question included the pickup selector though, does anyone really not use this? On strats I just tend to use bridge only, bridge plus middle or neck only, might think about just wiring a three-way selector with these options.
If you want to talk about useless controls on guitars then I'd say the Fender S1 switching is the worst invention in years. A cheap little plastic switch that looks like it's off a chinese made kid's toy and all it does is make reasonable pickups sound muddy and muffled. God only knows how the advertising people managed to turn that into a "unique selling point", it's rubbish.
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It depends on the guitar. On my juniors, it's more everything to 11 and off I go, but on Strats & Les Pauls I do use the volumes a lot, with a bit less use of the tone (I tend to use a wah to do tone changes). I do play with the controls on my Mockingbird a lot - but there are so many options that it is difficult to get back to a sound you had and lost! It's many years since I played live, but then I would tend just to use the volumes and use a wah and channel switch for tone.
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I almost never use the tone, only really use it on the neck MQ if I want a less twangy/smoother humbuckery sound.
Always use the volume controls to alter the dirtiness. Usually have the bridge pickup as my main distorted sound, then just flick to the neck pickup with its volume rolled down for cleans. That's with a les paul and single channel amp (the only way to do it!).