How To Dial In Presets When Your Guitar Has No Tone Pot

[jesussaddle]

Concerning the difference between guitars with and without tone pots, I've heard that with them..."Even when the knob is on "10", having it in the circuit causes a bit of a reduction in top end."

Meanwhile, with my main guitar (BC Rich Bitch 1986 with just a volume knob) presets I try from others always sound a bit too bright, but when I try to make simple changes on the Treble/Mid/Bass/Bright/Presence, to be quite honest, I don't think I'm cutting it (...correctly, sorry for the pun).

Has anyone made an analysis of typical dropout that might be present with the introduction of the tone pot, say set up at 10? It would be very handy to have a curve I could save as a parametric EQ block; or else maybe I won't be hearing the presets created by others, close to the way they were intended to sound.

It doesn't help that I have a Fred in the humbucker slot on my main guitar; but I like it their.

 

[warlockII]

Unfortunately there's a lot more to it than the absence or presence of a tone pot. I used to think people talking about tone woods were smoking a litttle too much, but I now realize that there is FAR more to the tone of a guitar than which pickup is in it and the shape of that guitar. I have 3 USA warlocks with Super Distortions in the bridge position. EACH one has a different tone. One is WAY brighter, one is way darker and the other is Goldi Locks. All three circuits are identical.
Sadly, your quest is going to be the seemingly favorite response on the forum...use your ears

 

[Brownmatthall]

Unfortunately there's a lot more to it than the absence or presence of a tone pot. I used to think people talking about tone woods were smoking a litttle too much, but I now realize that there is FAR more to the tone of a guitar than which pickup is in it and the shape of that guitar. I have 3 USA warlocks with Super Distortions in the bridge position. EACH one has a different tone. One is WAY brighter, one is way darker and the other is Goldi Locks. All three circuits are identical.
Sadly, your quest is going to be the seemingly favorite response on the forum...use your ears

This pretty much. My strat has only a volume knob and if you were going by what people commonly believe youd think the highs it puts out would shred your ears to bits but that's not even close to being the case (it's an alder body with a maple neck and RW board so it was pretty dark to begin with). You probably just have a particularly bright guitar

 

[jesussaddle]

Interesting. I thought the tone pot would have more impact than the wood, but this takes WarkockII's circumstance, of having the identical pickup and guitar shape, but several different woods. That's probably somewhat of a rarity. I'll keep this all in consideration.

In my ignorance I would say this does raise the need, if a lot of preset exchanging is to be more successful, of getting sort of a standard signature taking of one's guitar with which the preset was created - I guess like a tone match. That way if someone creates one or more presets, and they've created a stamp or signature of the tonal response of their guitar somehow, and shared it with the community, it would make more clear the intent of the preset by those who could both test their guitars for similarity to the source guitar for the preset, and possibly compensate in various tone-adjusting ways.

Anyways (anyways is not plural, its just making a statement), in my quest, right now my "bridge position" preset has a parametric EQ (that I just created) with a drop of -.015, -0.20, and -0.15 in the 2k, 4k, and 8k; and I bumped up the 1k to +0.5 to try and overcome the muffled effect of those 3 cuts.