Fess up-how much Vol-Tone-Pickup control usage?

[CaptainDesslock]

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?

[gwEm]

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.

[BigB]

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:

[tomjackson]

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!

[Dazza1004]

use pickup selector most, volume loads and tone never

[Will]

Yep, always playing about. Both volumes and tones, although I could live with a master tone

[Denim n Leather]

Nope, not at all. In fact, most of my guitars have no tone or volume controls whatsoever.

[Afghan Dave]

I only use my Kaoss Pad!

PDT_019 PDT_028 PDT_006

(I couldn't resist and I'm sorry)

[gwEm]

Nope, not at all. In fact, most of my guitars have no tone or volume controls whatsoever.

poseur  PDT_008

[Antag]

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...

[Twinfan]

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.)

[Lew]

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.

[Matt77]

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

[Denim n Leather]

Nope, not at all. In fact, most of my guitars have no tone or volume controls whatsoever.

poseur  PDT_008

OUCH! :)

[MDV]

Most of my guitars dont have a tone control

I use the volume as an on/off switch. (95% of the time)