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My main guitar is an epi JP which I have upgraded with a bareknuckle single coil in the neck and am pretty happy with its tone through my Cube 60. The clean channel settings I use are bass 10 o'clock: mids 2 o'clock: treble 10 o'clock, and tone on the guitar at about 8.
I also possess an epi dot which, for variety, I have had roundwounds on and it doesn't get played much . I finally realised I really don't like roundwounds and put on some TI 13 flats. I am interested to know how folks out there set their amps when using a semi-hollow. I know tone is in the ears of the beholder, but I am nonetheless interested in any suggestions to start playing around with.
One thing I know I don't like though, is the tone rolled right down - to me it sound like I'm playing through an amp in another room!
Another quick question while I'm at it is; whether anyone has experience of using GFS pickups to replace the stock epi dot ones. Thinking of this because the dot's stock neck pickup does sound very muddy compared to my JP with its upgrade. Any other suggestions welcome but I don't want to spend much though as the dot is not my main guitar.
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10-19-2011 10:11 AM
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I have not heard good reviews of GFS pickups. I mean teenage kids on the internet seem to like them, but real players that I know have tried them have been pretty unimpressed. If you like the Bareknuckle pickup you put in the JP, why not put that in the Dot as well?
One mistake that many Jazz players make is turning the treble down too far resulting in a muddy tone. Keep in mind that there is a fine line between warm and flat. What I usually do to set my treble is to start with it all the way up. When you play it will probably sound uncomfortable, thin, tinny, etc. Roll it down one notch at a time until it begins to sound more pleasing and when you get to a happy point stop!
Just remember that rolling off treble often means that it is harder for you to cut through the mix and often times you have to turn up the amp to compensate causing unwanted distortion.
I would say that when I played my student's Dot a few months ago it was very mid heavy, so you might want to notch that out a bit to keep it from sounding muddy as well.
Either way, they are fine guitars and between that and a cube you should definitely have all your bases covered! ;-)
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Man if you already tried BK you know how good they are... just get BK Stormy Monday for that guitar!
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Originally Posted by jorgemg1984
+1.
Going from a BK to a GFS would be like trading in your Ferrari for a Pacer.
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I agree...change your pickups to the Stormy Monday pickups...I just did on my semi-hollow Epiphone '66 Riviera...it produced a great sound for rock, blues and maybe some jazz selections...I prefer hollow body's for my jazz playing. Good Luck
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I don't think that hollow vs. semi hollow makes for a great difference in tone - it's more the strings, pickup, pick etc. A semi hollow with a center slab of wood will (like a solid body) lack the "reflection" of the acoustic box, but otherwise...
I definitely don't like to roll off the treble a lot. I like to hear the treble tones as well as the bass, and I don't know where that about "set the tone control to "0" comes from. Listen to say Kenny Burrell - plenty of brightness. On my guitars I have the tone control set to around 7-8. The settings on the amp is harder to compare as amps vary so much. Like others have said, rolling the treble of a lot may give problems with projection as the tone is less well defined.
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Actually I do feel a difference between 335 and archtops tones but I am not sure exactly what it is... I juts know I like archtops better (less mids maybe). About the tone pot I usually use mine on 2-3 and my sound is not muddy at all - what you need is to put very good electronics and wire in there.
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However, without regard to quality of components, the tone control of a guitar functions to shunt higher frequency signal to ground (earth). Originally Posted by jorgemg1984
Installed in the signal path, the combination of potentiometer and capacitor becomes therefore a crude low pass filter.
High quality components can make this filter's cutoff sharper and can reduce the noise it introduces -- to a limited degree. But it does not change the basic function, which is to "discard" treble frequencies produced by the pickup.
When I think of "mud," it is this treble range of the instrument gone missing, that I'm thinking about -- not the problems associated with low quality components.
And even with high quality components, the tone control -- as a matter of circuit design -- introduces capacitive reactance to the circuit and therefore a trend toward a slightly leading phase angle which means a de facto change of frequency of the signal sent to the amp.
All of which, in combination, leads to what some might call "muddy" sound...others might call it "inarticulate."
I avoid the problem entirely by removing the tone control altogether on guitars with pickguard mounted controls. With top mounted controls, I don't get quite as carried away...I don't like open holes in the top of the guitar, and it is a pain in the butt to fish components and wiring through "f" holes...So I just make certain the tone pot stays full treble at all times.
As an aside, I also prefer single coil pickups to humbuckers -- again, because I want the full palette of the instrument's tone sent to the amplifier.
"Rolling off" the tone is to me, analogous to the strategically placed hands in an artist's conception of Venus rising from the sea. Hell, there's stuff I want to see! On the guitar, turning down the treble hides some things that the guitarist feels uncomfortable about displaying.
Then too, our ideas of "jazz tone" are heavily influenced by both the limitations of recording/playback technology over the past 75 years as well as by the tastes of recording engineers, who by necessity are working between us and the recording guitarist -- essentially interpreting for us what the ambient sound really was...and the treble range often gets lost in the interpretation.
Oldane is right. Turning the treble down with the guitar's tone control doesn't improve the tone.
It may not entirely ruin the tone, but it doesn't help it.Last edited by cjm; 10-26-2011 at 07:45 AM.
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Well then we disagree again!
Rolling the treble down (even just a little) helps producing a softer tone not a muddier one in my experience (although this is very variable, a lot of other factors influence the using of the tone button). When I hear the tone pot fully engaged (even in pop rock music) I feel I hear too much of the guitar... And I do prefer humbuckers to single coils for a "jazz tone" (even if they don't give you the whole guitar sound). And using better electronics doesn't change the overall effect of the thing but it does prevent your sound from being muddy (at least in my experience).
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Your amplifier(s) does/do have tone control circuitry of its/their own, does/do it/they not? Originally Posted by jorgemg1984
Well then we disagree again! Rolling the treble down (even just a little) helps producing a softer tone not a muddier one in my experience (although this is very variable, a lot of other factors influence the using of the tone button). When I hear the tone pot fully engaged (even in pop rock music) I feel I hear too much of the guitar... And I do prefer humbuckers to single coils for a "jazz tone" (even if they don't give you the whole guitar sound). And using better electronics doesn't change the overall effect of the thing but it does prevent your sound from being muddy (at least in my experience).
(I'm experimenting with plural/singular forms this morning. I think it's going to be the way everyone communicates in the future.)
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I've always heard people say it's Wes' fault. Since his thumb sounds a lot like a pick with the tone set to 0, that's how people set up when they're chasing his sound. Originally Posted by oldane
I have to ride my volume and tone controls throughout a gig, sometimes throughout the song, because I play in a high school jazz band- a big band, that plays everything from traditional jazz to straight-up funk. I have to be ready to go from Freddie Green "tuned snare" style to Eddie Hazel funk chords to a solo that has to cut through a band with no sense of dynamics, so no single setting works for me.
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No, my amps don't have tone controls... I think the wholetone has it. I don't think I have ever tried a amp with one.. do you think its a better solution than having it on guitar?
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Always heard that too (and I think Wes himself just rolled it a bit, all the supposed darknesss come from the thumb) Originally Posted by Atticus
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I thought, for example, you said in other posts that you had tried various Polytone amps and that the older models sounded better to your ears, Originally Posted by jorgemg1984
Them knobs they got ain't just the electronic equivalent of superfluous nipples.
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Sorry I missed the point :/ (english is not my first language) I tried one old Polytone with just bass and treble if I recall correctly.. Tried new ones with lots of buttons and sonic circuit and yes, I do think the old ones sounded better... They had a tone control?
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Good morning all . . . .
I've heard of some who have removed all tone controls from their Lesters . . . wired the humbuckers volume controls directly to the input jack and controled everything from the amp. Often wondered about that . . .
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Let me just say that for someone who doesn't speak English as your mother tongue, you are extraordinarily skilled at communicating in this here patois. Originally Posted by jorgemg1984
Where the hell did you study? My kids studied German and Spanish in college and couldn't order a beer in either language without resorting to hand gestures.
But...anyhow...the basic bass/treble controls on some of the older Polytones, as well as the "mid" controls and the dark/bright slide switches on intermediate production...all constitute "tone controls."
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Never tried it on a "Lester," because I never owned one. But I've done it on other guitars and it works fine. Originally Posted by Patrick2
Good morning all . . . .
I've heard of some who have removed all tone controls from their Lesters . . . wired the humbuckers volume controls directly to the input jack and controled everything from the amp. Often wondered about that . . .
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I think we must destinguish between the sustained sound (the sound ringing after the string has been picked) and the attack (the sound of the pick/finger/nail hitting the string). Originally Posted by Atticus
I don't think one can replicate Wes' sound by rolling off treble. By doing that, one changes the sustained sound. But what was different about Wes' sound was the attack (the thumb instead of a pick). On most of his records - but not all of them - Wes had plenty of brightness in his sustained sound, but he had a softer attack - though not as soft as I sound when plying with my thumb, because Wes had a callous on the thumb from using it all the time.
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Well I had some English in school and here in Portugal everything has subtitles - so we always watch movies or series in English (this is quite rare in Europe actually). I also read The Economist sometimes (my dad is a subscriber) and I also like to read in English because I always feel a lot gets lot in translation (currently reading "To Kill a Mocking Bird" by Harper Lee, highly recommended). And I also spend some time in this forum Originally Posted by cjm
My speaking is much poorer because I don't practice it a lot... What your kids need to do is practice the language, I have learned French in school but I am not very good these days because I never speak or read it - but I can speak spanish well because I have dealt with spanish people much more then french (and spanish vocabulary is also much closer to portuguese).
About the controls I was never able to replicate the effect of the tone control on any amp standard controls like bass, mids, treble (but I have never tried an amp with its own tone control). Not even with my EQ pedal, any tips for not using the tone control so much? You seem to know much more than I do about this, my expertise is very user-oriented...
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That is actually the point of it all. Originally Posted by jorgemg1984
We begin with the premise that the tone control on the guitar detracts from the quality of the ambient amplified sound of guitar and amp, and serves mostly to replicate problems with ancient recording technology.
You mentioned spoken language and contrasted your skill at reading and writing English with your ability to speak and converse. Something analogous exists with jazz guitar.
We can read a transcription of a guitar solo recorded in 1950, but as time passes, the only way people have of learning the "accent" of jazz guitar "as spoken" in 1950, becomes increasingly through recordings from the earlier era.
In essence, we begin to mimic errors introduced by the medium of transmission, and that's where most of the concept of "dark, smoky, 1950s sound," as it is commonly thought of today, comes from.
So the idea is not to replicate at the amplifier, problems caused by a guitar's tone control being used to replicate problems with the recording industry.
The idea rather, is to allow the electric guitar to "speak" with its "natural voice."
It's effing mellifluous
if you give it a chance, and it's a voice that needs no other effects in ensemble with the other instruments that are typically heard in jazz.
Sure, tastes vary. But I would be very curious to know how it sounds to you after trying it again -- only this time to test whether or not you had been rolling the tone control back into the mud to replicate technical problems with recordings from 60 years ago...and then relying on add-on electronic effects to add interest ("modernity?") to the sound after damaging it with the tone control.
It could be a generational thing, and you might conclude I'm full of crap...which I may be
...but I'd still be interested to know.
Last edited by cjm; 10-27-2011 at 08:33 AM.
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Well the only thing I can tell you is I don't always use effects. A lot of the times I just plug the guitar to the amp and use the amps reverb. And I do like the sound with tone tone control at 3 much better than with the tone control at 7 or 10 - it takes treble away and I like that... I am not saying its better, its just my taste. (I also think most amps have too much mids and treble because the makers want the amps to cut through better at the cost of a balanced sound)
When I use effects (pedalboard will be finished soon and it has 8 pedals on it) I still use the tone control on 2-3 because I am not able to get this effect from my EQ pedal. I am not sure I use effects for modernity, that's probably true... I do love a good archtop through amp tone in small settings or in a good small standards groups but... when you play with several horns and the rhytmic section plays hard (very common these days) I do need delay and reverb in order to make the guitar bled with the rest of the band... or I feel when it gets to the guitar solo dynamics come down a lot and thing lose interest (and I do play more notes without delay and hall reverb due to lack of sustain of the notes).
I actually feel this is also true for piano players, when I hear those classic Coltrane records the piano solos are always too smooth compared to the horn ones. "Modern" effects help the guitar to deal with that imo...
One case or the other I do like the effect of the tone knob and I dont think it makes my sound muddier or duller. But that's my taste...
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I seem to remember reading that Wes added a lot of brightness to counter the effects of his soft attack. I don't by any means claim that rolling off the tone will accurately replicate Wes' sound, but some people seem to think that's how to do it, and that's where the misconception comes in. Originally Posted by oldane
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Wes was always trying for a brighter tone; he had his amps modified trying to get it.
My experience is that the tones on the guitar and the tones on the amp have to be treated differently because one is in front of the other in the signal path.
My best results come from letting the guitar send plenty of wide band signal with the guitar tone between 7 and 10. Then, focusing that at the amp by keeping the bass and treble under half way and setting the mids up close to full.
This "squeezing" of the tone sounds better to me than the reverse way (trying to broaden or brighten a narrow or dark tone).
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