For most of my years playing, the knobs have all been on 10. Two years ago I changed that though, and my playing and tone is the best it's ever been because of that change.
I was always on 10, and primarily played humbucker guitars. I had a really remarkably good strat, but I just never liked playing it. It sounded wrong to me and I didn't know how to approach it, so I stuck to my humbucker guitars. It always bugged me though because so many of my favorite players are strat guys. I couldn't understand why some of my favorite tones and playing happened on strats and yet I couldn't make even a great one sound decent. About two years ago, I was fed up with this situation and decided to change it. I decided to force myself to play and gig the strat exclusively until I could make it sing.
It started out rough with the same problems I had always experienced. I always dialed in my patches with one of my humbucker guitars with all the controls on 10. I never touched the guitar controls and changed tones/gain with pedals (or blocks and patch switching in the Axe-FX). In the first forced strat gig, things were ugly so I reached down and rolled the tone knob off to about 6 between sets. Then the lightbulb came on. That was the one simple thing I had been missing. It's funny how something can be right in front of you that you need, but if you ignore it for years you completely forget about it. Just rolling the tone knob back on the strat made it sound right to me and I had a blast playing the rest of the gig. It had always sounded strident and harsh to me because it was strident and harsh because I had the tone knob on 10...
That started me to using the knobs a little bit. I later watched a few videos of my favorite players and noticed that they were constantly tweaking the guitar's controls, sometimes every few notes they were making changes even. It really added to the expressiveness of their playing. I tried it, but I was awful and awkward at it live. I stuck with it though, and two years later it's beginning to become natural to me. It's really changed the way I play and added a really rich new level to my playing.
I now dial in my patches with all the controls rolled off to about 7ish, even on my humbucker guitars. One of the things I noticed when playing the strat in that first few gigs with the tone knob rolled off to 6 or so is that I had the ability to get way brighter sounds if I needed them. I was surprised how often that was exactly what I needed to cut in certain situations live. The option was never there when my controls were on 10.
The other benefit I've experienced with this new use of the knobs is that my patch switching is greatly reduced. The Axe-FX is so responsive to changes of the guitar's controls that once you get good with it you can get a wide range of tones from a single preset. I used to think it was easier to stomp on a switch or two, but I've learned I was wrong. It's easier, more accurate, faster, and smoother to use the guitar's controls.
It was a long struggle for me, but it paid off big in the end. Hopefully someone else will read this and give it a try.
D
