PSA - Check your guitar tone knob...

[2204JCM]

I’d never get burned by that.
As soon as I even think somethings off I check my guitar volume and tone pots first.
Matter of fact I tend to regularly check them even when I don’t hear anything wrong.

 

[la szum]

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!

I don't get players who are not into there gear and crafting tones. It's a mandatory part
f the job description, no?

I still know guys who never get off maxing everything out. ALL THE TIME! DUH!! Or drummers
that NEVER tune their drums.

Maybe nuance and subtlety and skill are not everyone's cup of tea. Or THC.

 

[la szum]

In a similar vein... Must have trodden on my Wah pedal getting onto a dark stage once. Spent the first 3 songs madly dialing top end off the amp. Then first time I clicked the Wah for a guitar break, the sound all went kind of dark. Told my then girlfriend what happened after the show. She hadn't even noticed there was anything amiss for the first 4 songs.

Liam

She was probably intently listening to the bass player.

Oh, and that Wah kerfuffle has gotten me once or twice. I switched
over to Morley optical wahs and it don't happen no more.

 

[la szum]

You made me flash back to starting playing guitar. I used to just keep volume and tone wide open, so clueless. Now I live on them.

YES! I even resort to occasionally toying with dialing in tones with Vol and Tone on the guitar
NOT wide open. I kind of don't get the logic in the default method of dialing in everything
with the guitar wide open. Where do we have to go when we do but down? You certainly can't
go up from there (apart from a Boost/OD), so doing so limits the range of gain, compression,
saturation, relative brightness. and volume we have at our disposal. Just seems that dialing in
a tone somewhere under "wide open" would be both more versatile AND expressive.

 

[la szum]

I’d never get burned by that.
As soon as I even think somethings off I check my guitar volume and tone pots first.
Matter of fact I tend to regularly check them even when I don’t hear anything wrong.

These are clearly the words of a wise man raised by Marshalls.

 

[solo-act]

Having volume a “pinky away” on my strat style guitar is very convenient and it forces me to rein in the right hand so I’m not flailing too much.

Because volume is so close to the bridge pickup, I can align the knob with the height adjustment screw so the screw acts as the number indicator. I tend to run 7 to 8 and pull up with pinky as needed. I do it by ear / feel mostly but it’s nice to glance down and verify.

Bridge tone is bypassed. I’d like to bring it back in though for more shaping, especially on cleaner bridge tones.

 

[fcs101]

YES! I even resort to occasionally toying with dialing in tones with Vol and Tone on the guitar
NOT wide open. I kind of don't get the logic in the default method of dialing in everything
with the guitar wide open. Where do we have to go when we do but down? You certainly can't
go up from there (apart from a Boost/OD), so doing so limits the range of gain, compression,
saturation, relative brightness. and volume we have at our disposal. Just seems that dialing in
a tone somewhere under "wide open" would be both more versatile AND expressive.

Absolutely. Here's a short little video on the matter from JB. Probably not much new for those posting, but interesting nonetheless. I know you've posted previously about using fewer effects these days (I'm the same) and I think this plays into that.

 

[yoitsmegabe]

I started diagnosing amp problems not realizing my guitar cable wasn't plugged in. I used to wrap it once around the strap before plugging it in. I must have just straight up forgotten to plug it in after wrapping. Needless to say I felt like a total ass when I figured it out

 

[Adman103]

The other thing I've grown to love is the bass cut knob, if you have one wired in- man, what a useful thing. Comes on a bunch of G&Ls, and now I kind of hate not having it on other guitars. I've attached an article from John Blackstone on putting in a bass knob. Bass Cut Knobs

 

[Budda]

The other thing I've grown to love is the bass cut knob, if you have one wired in- man, what a useful thing. Comes on a bunch of G&Ls, and now I kind of hate not having it on other guitars. I've attached an article from John Blackstone on putting in a bass knob. Bass Cut Knobs

I want to say Reverend does this too?

 

[Amparkmusic]

I am immensely triggered by this thread

had a casino gig and this happened to me. I’m looking at the sound guy like “is this your first day on the job?” And he’s back at me like “is this your first time on a gig? Guitar players + modelers = recipe for disaster….”

i found the tone knob issue, then after our first set he couldn’t stop ranting and raving to me about how great the tone was from the af3. Definitely not one of my finest moments!

 

[trancegodz]

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.

I always turn all the knobs on my guitar on 10 as soon as I pick it up out of habit. Even when I am not plugged into an amp. It's a habit.

Once at a gig my Marshall Major wasn't making a sound. The roadies were checking fuse boxes back stage, my cables, amp fuses etc. After a few minutes they figured out I'd forgotten to switch my amp off of standby.

 

[Adman103]

I want to say Reverend does this too?

Yea, I think they do! Super useful.

 

[Joe Bfstplk]

The other thing I've grown to love is the bass cut knob, if you have one wired in- man, what a useful thing. Comes on a bunch of G&Ls, and now I kind of hate not having it on other guitars. I've attached an article from John Blackstone on putting in a bass knob. Bass Cut Knobs

Even just a switch works nicely. I modded my Noventa Jazzmaster with a stacked concentric pot, then found it ended up all the way up or down, so replaced that with a pull-switch and the original knob....

 

[Chewie5150]

Somewhat related as this reminds me of my JP6 BFR guitar I had years ago and my signal chain had the cable from instrument going into a passive Aby box. for months and months i could not figure out why they guitar sounded so 'nasal'. brought it in to the shop to have the electronics checked out - totally fine.
the culprit: was the ABy box and cable/impedance thing. Once I removed all that it cleared up right away. It was a big derp moment and reminded me to always check the simple things first.

 

[RevDrucifer]

I don't get players who are not into there gear and crafting tones. It's a mandatory part
f the job description, no?

I still know guys who never get off maxing everything out. ALL THE TIME! DUH!! Or drummers
that NEVER tune their drums.

Maybe nuance and subtlety and skill are not everyone's cup of tea. Or THC.

I know with my buddy it's an overall unawareness of the big picture. He's played for over 20 years but after our band broke up in 2006 he kind of lost all his passion for it, he was just starting to learn how to dial in tones back that. He's got a bit of a drinking issue as well, which is the major issue behind everything. Dude gets so wasted he doesn't realize what he's doing.

If you heard him play now, you'd never believe we had him join a prog-metal band back in the day. But he's my bro and I love the hell out of that dude!

 

[squealie]

I used to have an issue with my Axe2 on gigs where the wah would auto-engage constantly and stick. That was quite maddening.

I'm sure it could have been sorted with the engage settings, but it made me quite gunshy about auto-anything. Give me a button.

 

[Joe Bfstplk]

I used to have an issue with my Axe2 on gigs where the wah would auto-engage constantly and stick. That was quite maddening.

I'm sure it could have been sorted with the engage settings, but it made me quite gunshy about auto-anything. Give me a button.

I set mine to auto-engage at 95% for toe-down to be 'off', and tweaked the response curve to put a flat spot at the top, so that it works a little better. Now it doesn't accidentally switch off when I get too close to the top of the wah sweep, because I moved the top of the sweep over a bit so it doesn't hit 95% before maxing out the wah pot. Push beyond that and stay put, and it's fairly reliably off....

 

[∞Fractals]

I know with my buddy it's an overall unawareness of the big picture. He's played for over 20 years but after our band broke up in 2006 he kind of lost all his passion for it, he was just starting to learn how to dial in tones back that. He's got a bit of a drinking issue as well, which is the major issue behind everything. Dude gets so wasted he doesn't realize what he's doing.

If you heard him play now, you'd never believe we had him join a prog-metal band back in the day. But he's my bro and I love the hell out of that dude!

Help him then … we all have struggled

 

[RevDrucifer]

Help him then … we all have struggled

Oh trust me, there's no one in his life that's more protective of him than I am. I don't want to get into details here, but I've got his back 110% because he always has mine. But there's only so much I can do for him without him taking my advice and doing something with it.