Using guitar tone controls as integral part of tone?

J

jmpatrick

Inspired
Question for the group. I have an A3v1 and a small arsenal of Fender Stratocasters. As the Axe firmware as evolved I've discovered that my tone sweet spot has become a combination of drive and amp settings along with a little trimming of the tone control that is wired to my bridge pickup. This tames the highs slightly and fattens the tone. Would you adjust the A3 to so that the tone control adjustment is no longer necessary? All my Strats are wired the same and all have the same Zexcoil pickups so they're pretty consistent.

There's no right or wrong answer, I guess. Just curious how others would handle it.
 
Personally I never touch the tone controls on my strat and haven't for about 25 years since I picked up a guitar. Tone controls just make the guitar sound muffled to me. If I want a softer sound I'll usually head to the neck pickup or dial down the treble on the axe, or even go for a humbucker guitar. My Edge strat even bypasses the tone control with a notched control knob.

As you say though, there's many ways to skin a cat so if you like it, keep on doing it. There's no right or wrong.
 
That's awesome that you're using Zexcoils; I hope to own a set someday. I would completely stick with the tone controls on your guitar. I've thought about this quite a bit, because I use my volume and tone pots all the time, but I don't think there is any way to recreate exactly how passive tone pots interact with your pickups; I could be wrong here, but I've scoured all sorts of forums for any external way to do this, and the closest I came was this Guitar Nutz 2 thread. Chrome was marking that the spreadsheet couldn't be downloaded securely, so I passed, but I wonder, if you did find the exact rolloff behavior of your tone pot with the cap value you use and programmed an external parametric eq to recreate that, would it truly sound just the same? Do tone pots themselves load the pickup to do what they do, and if so, wouldn't you need some sort of circuitry like what Cliff has created to change input impedance physically to create this, i.e., basically to build a programmable tone pot into the Axe at the input stage? I'm not sure of these answers, but I'm sure many members here would probably have a better explanation of this as a possibility, maybe @FractalAudio or @Andy Eagle could shed more light. I know that for my experimentation, nothing has been able to supersede my guitar's pots so perfectly. I'm also really specific about my cap values (I use very low values, which I switched to after using the PMT V-Treb variable treble bleed circuit, which is also great), so they act just how I want.
 
Bridge tone control on my EJ strat lives somewhere between 4 and 6 these days. I've always rolled it off some, but more lately, and it's working well for me.

Ideally I'd rewire so 2 & 4 bypass the tone controls completely, and 3 is tied to either bridge or neck, not sure, have to try it. That's the one I have the most problems with lately.
 
Well, yea, I definitely use tone controls as an integral part of my tone- I play a few G&Ls, and they're really designed to be used that way- I usually start with my tone parked around 7, and go from there. If you're happy with your tone knob dialed back a bit, then leave it there and call it good, and like Leon said, if you want to get a little sparkle back, it's there for you. I have a bass cut on a few of my guitars as well, and I rarely leave that on all the way either.
 
On my single coils, I have the tone around 6-7ish. Humbuckers I run at 10 and I can use the same amp settings for both that way. Even without the humbuckers in the picture, I prefer the tone rolled off a little. Tone and volume at 10 has a resonant peak in the treble. Around 6-7ish on the tone is where that peak is smoothed out.

Kinda like this picture I found:

1634608603518.jpeg
 
laxu said:
I like to set my amp model so that it's a bit too bright with tone on 10 and then roll the tone back. Now I have an easy brightness control with range both ways.
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I tend to do this too, with volume as well (as Leon said). This gives me some little extra control which the sound guy out front doesn't have so if I want to climb out of the stage mix a bit...I can.
 
Yup. Default for me when dialing in tones is with Volume and Tone rolled off just a touch. Like, Leon,
who mentioned having that little extra at your disposal. Nice to be able to get more or less bright/loud/gainy.
 
favance said:
Some of the all time great guitar sounds have been made by adjusting the volume & tone controls on the guitar...ex. Clapton Woman Tone.
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Yes. Those Tone all the way down .... errr.... tones on a 335 or SG are Godly in an unique way.
 
I never used them until I got a Tele. Then you definitely need to trim the tone a bit. I usually run it at around 8.
 
I've started doing this a lot lately. I am always worried how well I can control it live. There, it is just easier to leave everything open and just play.
 
Smittefar said:
I've started doing this a lot lately. I am always worried how well I can control it live. There, it is just easier to leave everything open and just play.
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Practice controlling it at practice and you should be fine. Think of it like practicing using a pedalboard way before you play a show.
 
I try to keep my tone wide open if possible. You could set up different channels on the amp to keep the original And the dialed back sound to AB them - as alternative. Having said that, there is no reason to not use the tone knob but for me I like to take the guitar out of the equation and keep it as neutral as possible if I can.
 
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