Volume and tone knobs....?

Jimmytwotimes

Jimmytwotimes

Experienced
Just curious as to where everyones tone and volume knobs are at when creating your patches.
I tend to have all mine all the way up and adjust just the bass mid treb in the axe.
I always see people like Bonamassa constantly fiddling with both while he plays. I typically never mess with my tone knobs and always have my gain/od settings a little hot in my patch - and use the volume knob to tame.
Opinions ?
 
it's a different style of playing, i'd say. contemporary tones/players have the volume all the way up always. classic tones or people familiar with how old amps worked - no channels, no pedals, the only way to change gain quickly is from the guitar - have the guitar volume down and ride it for different tones.
 
^^^^^^^^^ What Chris said.

I'lll also add that various amp models respond differently to this - some far better than other and still further, more so with my SC PUps versus my humbuckers (still there, but to a lesser degree).

With a Strat-type I'll dial in several volume levels to assure I get the flexibility I want out of an amp. Tone knob less so, but depending on a specific sound objective, especially with a drive in the patch.

With a PRS HB-loaded guitar, nearly always max volume and tone. Although it also has a piezo in the saddle which I need to manage - depending on the patch - usually a scene or two just for the Piezo (or a blend of piezo and HB).
 
I usually go w/ 10, unless I know I'm creating a specific sound. I do like how a couple of my guitars (particularly my PRS 513) sound with the vol at 7, so sometimes I'll create from there, especially for some cleaner tones. I don't generally use the knobs much when I play; I will roll off a bit of the tone if something is too bright when I'm playing but then I'll usually go back and fix the patch later. I just let the Axe take care of everything ;-)
 
10 while making preset.

Then I play with my knobs depending on the song and the guitar being used.
 
I use my tone and volume knobs constantly. I have been doing that for decades, long before there was FAS. I rarely crank my guitar volume all the way up. To my ears, the sweet spots are in the "tweens" as in tween off and fully up. I use the tone knob to add a little bite or roll it off for the sweet creamy sounds. I use the guitar volume to clean up the sound, or overdrive it. I have done entire performances with just using a 50w Plexi preset and using the guitar tone and volume to enhance the sound of my guitar. When building a preset, I tweak the preset until it sounds good with the guitar volume rolled off, and cranked up, and I set the tones so that I can run my tone knob at around 5, and then add bite as needed.
 
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I build patches with volume and tone on 10, but check how the tone changes as I roll off the volume and tone.
 
Geezerjohn said:
I have done entire performances with just using a 50w Plexi preset and using the guitar tone and volume to enhance the sound of my guitar.
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I think using the tone pot is more or less mandatory for me with the Plexi ..... it cleans up on the vol but can go ice picky ... so the tone pot definitely can come into play. Then again I usually use HSS guitars and my fav one has the singles running off a 500K pot .....

Much as I love Marshalls (and esp the Plexi 50 in the AxeFX) I'm having serious nooky with the Bogners (Euro Red & Blue) on the AxeFX now - they clean up really well for me on the vol but seem to keep the highs under control as they do.

Could be an interesting question to ask the volume riders out there- what amps do you find clean up best for you from pretty dirty to pretty clean on the AxeFX?
 
I tend to run with all my knobs cranked to 10, although I will roll off the volume from time to time to clean up a gainy signal. More often than not, though, I'll have clean and dirty scenes within a preset instead. (I have a pedal-controlled volume block on every preset, so I ride that all night long.)

I'm so bad about keeping the guitar volume at 10 that I sometimes forget the knobs are there. I've had cases where I let someone sit in with the band on my guitar, then when I strapped back into the guitar, it took me a minute or two to figure out why I wasn't getting any guitar signal...the volume knob had been turned all the way down. Doh!
 
Most of the time, I've got both volume and tone cranked.

With some of my tones, I use the volume knob to go between sweetness and slam. And there's nothing like the controlled swell you get when you pinky-roll the volume knob. Roll it all the way down—instant mute. Set one volume up and one down, and you can get the kill-switch effect with the pickup selector.

The tone knob is the most overlooked control on the guitar. While I dial in most of my tones with the tone knob full up, sometimes I sweeten the sound by rolling it off. If I have a preset that I love that I've dialed in at home, and it gets too ice-picky at the gig, the tone knob is an instant, precise, and very musical cure. IMO, every Strat and Tele player should get familiar with the tone knob, if only to discover how it can bail you out of a jam in a hurry.
 
I don't even bother to include a tone knob on my guitar builds. I never use one so why include one? Except for where it interacts with an internal effect. To me turning down the tone knob makes me sound muddy and loses clarity. Volume is always on 10, because if I want to clean up my sound, I'll just switch to a clean preset or scene. I do like to use the volume knob for volume swells, so it does have its uses.
 
Good tube amps allow for plenty of highs without getting shrill ice picking sounds.
And that's where you can play with tone. It can bring you more in the foreground (more highs) or background (less highs) of the mix, and you can control it from your guitar without hiting any foot controller. It isn't working well with high-gain sounds and not with every guitar, but once you had expirienced it, you know how to use it.
 
Most of my guitars don't have a tone control and couple have just one humbucker. I install treble bleeds on all of them, save the ES Les Paul, so I can control the gain but keep the clarity.
 
I'm guessing most of the 'keep it on 10' people are using stomps for extra dirt when needed.

In all my years playing with conventional (MV) amps I never used a overdrive pedal - I always set the amp to react to the volume pot on the guitar. Delay pedal, compressor pedal, chorus pedal, a wah and that was it.

Then I went rack and MIDI based with a JMP-1, FX unit and Mesa power amp so I just dialled in whatever I wanted and switched presets to get more preamp generated dirt if the vol pot method wasn't up to it for any particular song.

I'm still trying my best to get into the mindset of adding boost on demand with a stomp block now ... but old dog new tricks blah blah ..... I have a drive block for it in my presets but I still automatically go for the volume on the guitar first ... extremely old school I know .... but I like it.
 
maxdown said:
what amps do you find clean up best for you from pretty dirty to pretty clean on the AxeFX?
Click to expand...

I'm really much less familiar with all the amp models than many folks here. But I've been really knocked out by the Carol Ann OD-2's ability to do exactly that, from the volume knob on the guitar... which I personally use a lot.

I tend to build patches w/ guitar volume around 8 or 9, and only use 10 as an extreme, in my live playing. When the OD-2 is screaming at around 9, it's possible to clean it up for rhythm at 4 or 5.
 
what paulasbell said...and...
I played with the shiva amp and was impressed with its guitar volume knob interaction...
 
LP: Always dial in Tone at 10 on both pups. Middle PUP position: Bridge pup at 10, neck at roughly 4. Gets me a baseline, and flexibility to do things on the fly.

Telecaster: Tone knob at 5, vol at 10. Dial in amp at middle position. It's just too damn'd shrill on Bridge PUP (when I switch to it) if I don't do that. Neck position then I can goose tone to reduce mud.
 
maxdown said:
I'm guessing most of the 'keep it on 10' people are using stomps for extra dirt when needed.

In all my years playing with conventional (MV) amps I never used a overdrive pedal - I always set the amp to react to the volume pot on the guitar. Delay pedal, compressor pedal, chorus pedal, a wah and that was it.

Then I went rack and MIDI based with a JMP-1, FX unit and Mesa power amp so I just dialled in whatever I wanted and switched presets to get more preamp generated dirt if the vol pot method wasn't up to it for any particular song.

I'm still trying my best to get into the mindset of adding boost on demand with a stomp block now ... but old dog new tricks blah blah ..... I have a drive block for it in my presets but I still automatically go for the volume on the guitar first ... extremely old school I know .... but I like it.
Click to expand...

Come to think of it, when I started out my first amp was a Fender Twin Reverb. That only does clean. But takes pedals very well. So I quickly got in the habit of using dirt boxes for dirt and not my volume pot. Maybe if my first amp had been a single channel Marshall my guitar playing habits would have developed differently.
 
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