PSA - Check your guitar tone knob...

FarleyUK

FarleyUK

Inspired
Obviously only relevant if you have tone knob(s) on your guitar

Last night at rehearsal, I was becoming increasingly frustrated with the sound I had; no matter what I did on the AFX3, it was muddy, woofy and muffled. Nothing like the tones I dialed in at home.

After 2 hours, I suddenly realised why.... I'd turned the tone knob to 0 by accident, thinking it was the volume knob while we were all having a chat at the start.

D'oh.

On the plus side, with the tone at 0 and using a plexi model, I nailed Gary Moore's tone on 'Murder in the Skies'.
 
FarleyUK said:
Obviously only relevant if you have tone knob(s) on your guitar

Last night at rehearsal, I was becoming increasingly frustrated with the sound I had; no matter what I did on the AFX3, it was muddy, woofy and muffled. Nothing like the tones I dialed in at home.

After 2 hours, I suddenly realised why.... I'd turned the tone knob to 0 by accident, thinking it was the volume knob while we were all having a chat at the start.

D'oh.

On the plus side, with the tone at 0 and using a plexi model, I nailed Gary Moore's tone on 'Murder in the Skies'.
Click to expand...

I've done that before ha ha.

Another one is always tune your guitar before creating presets.....
 
My worse experience like this was when I had a Gibson with those god awful auto tuners. In the middle of playing and singing it decided to detune every string on the guitar. 70watts of pure detune down to "I can now remove my strings" tone.

The next day that was stripped off and replaced.
 
On my strat, tone on zero is so extreme, it's really not usable for anything. I used to do that on the neck pickup of Gibsons I had, for that vowel thing, but either that's super different on this guitar, or my tastes have changed.

Point being, I make mistakes all the time, but that one would be pretty hard to miss!
 
I was actually using the tone knob on my strat middle pickup last night. Just a touch and my ambient sound was incredible.
 
Budda said:
I was actually using the tone knob on my strat middle pickup last night. Just a touch and my ambient sound was incredible.
Click to expand...
How are your controls wired? What kind of guitar is it?

I have an EJ strat, which has bridge and neck tones, none connected to the middle pickup.
I Do Not Like that middle pickup by itself, it's so upper-middy, and weirdly loud even almost flush with the pickguard, though middle-neck and middle-bridge are great.
It could totally be me and how I tend to set up amps and cabs, but that's how it comes out.
I've wondered many times if...
a) a tone control would help (which is why I asked about yours), and
b) if I should just get a super-switch and wire it so middle position is bridge-neck, which I've never heard but would like to
 
Dave Merrill said:
How are your controls wired? What kind of guitar is it?

I have an EJ strat, which has bridge and neck tones, none connected to the middle pickup.
I Do Not Like that middle pickup by itself, it's so upper-middy, and weirdly loud even almost flush with the pickguard, though middle-neck and middle-bridge are great.
It could totally be me and how I tend to set up amps and cabs, but that's how it comes out.
I've wondered many times if...
a) a tone control would help (which is why I asked about yours), and
b) if I should just get a super-switch and wire it so middle position is bridge-neck, which I've never heard but would like to
Click to expand...
Tone on both neck and middle, master volume. Thought about doing 1 vol 1 tone and moving everything away from the bridge, but no band = no gigs = no reason haha.
 
Interesting!

Maybe I'd like my middle pickup more if I set my amps so bridge with tone full up was great. Actually, even more than full up, not loaded by a tone control at all.

Currently my happy place is bridge tone around 7 +-.

Worth a shot at some point.
 
This also goes the other way!

If you think your tone sounds too harsh or bright, turn down your tone knob! I regularly keep my telecaster at like 70% tone and will turn it up (ex) finger picking) or down (ex) smooth overdrive) depending on what I'm playing.

Try 0 tone with a fuzz pedal like Pi
 
I went to jam with my buddy and his new drummer friend last Friday night as it’d been quite some time since I’ve played music in a room with other people. While, I wouldn’t call anything we did “music”, that was the goal. They were both wasted when I got there.

I set up my stuff and hear my buddy playing and it was all muffled and terrible sounding. He’s playing high gain tones through a Peavey XXX halfstack with an E-II Horizon III, nothing should be muffled at all. I look over and see he’s on the neck pickup, I switched it to the bridge then checked his tone knob, all the way down. I did this at least 6 more times that night and he wasn’t even realizing he was doing it.

To be fair, he’s asked me for 20 years to dial his stuff in for him because he just doesn’t know what he’s doing and gets all flustered when I explain it to him. This is precisely why I’m making him buy an FM3, so I can make all his presets for him. I’m just going to have to remove his tone knob and selector switch!
 
One thing I did last time I set up wiring from scratch was to use really low value tone caps (I think it was .01 on the bridge and .015 on the neck), and that way I had usable tone all the way down to zero, where it would morph to a kind of wah type sound. I'll definitely return to that whenever I rewire my current guitar.

I had such a wide range of tone, I was using my volume and tone knobs constantly to refine my tone for whatever lick I was practicing. What I did was to audition different caps with alligator clips until one felt right for each pickup. It was so awesome. I used two dial concentric knobs on a hardtail Super Strat to mimic Les Paul / SG wiring, so, with a fully usually knob range, it felt just limitless.
 
State of Epicicity said:
One thing I did last time I set up wiring from scratch was to use really low value tone caps (I think it was .01 on the bridge and .015 on the neck), and that way I had usable tone all the way down to zero, where it would morph to a kind of wah type sound. I'll definitely return to that whenever I rewire my current guitar.

I had such a wide range of tone, I was using my volume and tone knobs constantly to refine my tone for whatever lick I was practicing. What I did was to audition different caps with alligator clips until one felt right for each pickup. It was so awesome. I used two dial concentric knobs on a hardtail Super Strat to mimic Les Paul / SG wiring, so, with a fully usually knob range, it felt just limitless.
Click to expand...
Yea, alligator clips are the way to do it. The wiring on pickups is often so poorly designed, that we often default to just leaving knobs on ten, because other settings just sound bad- too muffled, too low output, etc... and there are a lot of other component values that might make controls more usable if you take the time to figure them out.
I play a few G&Ls, which are really NOT guitars that you leave on ten all the time- I default to rolling off my tone knobs to maybe 7, and go from there. But regular alnico hum buckers, etc get far too woofy with the tone down unless you're going for the woman tone thing.
 
I like Fender's No Load tone pots where 10 has a detent and it disconnects the tone cap completely. You get the best of both worlds, full tone knob range and a wide open no cap option too with no extra switches needed. With new strings on my Strat, I'll often have it on 8 or 9 until they warm up a touch.
 
I find that as I play my hand hits the volume knob and slowly decreases as I go. I have to keep checking it to make sure it is all the way up. Especially live.
 
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