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Hi everyone.
I realize a great deal of this is personal preference but:
Is it still good practice to have the volume turned all the way up on the guitar, and then adjust amp. I thought I heard years ago that it was always best to have the "valve" full open for best pick up sound? The only thing i can see a probable with is you have nowhere to go if it is totally up and you want more sound.
I've got a single p/u Benedetto Bravo on order. My first electric really. So all new to me.
And I suppose this same question would go for the tone knob on guitar as well.
Thanks.
Jonathan
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12-05-2014 02:45 PM
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Personally I need to have the ability to adjust my volume on the guitar, so the "always fully on" doesn't work at all.
As far as tone setting, that's absolutely and unequivocally a personal thing. I set my amp for a basic sound and make adjustments at the guitar depending on the requirements of the music and have been doing that for decades.
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Personally I set the volume on the amp then adjust the volume and tone on the guitar to what I need ie. I roll the volume back for rhythm and turn it up for soloing, if I had to adjust the amp everytime I would have to stop playing, I suppose a volume pedal might work but I don't like pedals colouring the sound.
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Interestingly Jim Hall used to turn down when he played louder and turn up to play softer.
FWIW, if you get a good quality volume pedal, it won't colour the sound at all. But it's kind of overkill for a jazz gig.
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I tend to start off with a flat response on me amp and then boost bass or treble on it to suit the room. Then the guitar controls to taste. I'm always tweaking guitar electrics but rolling off the volume always darkens the tone.
Playing volume and tone against each other is fun. I use controls without numbers generally as I would get bogged down with #6 this and #2.5 that. Changing to un-numbered controls was liberating for me as I would trust my ears and change the overal tone on the fly.
I have wired in a tone choke for a neck pickup and with the tone control rolled on it naturally quietens, so comping with choke engaged and soloing with choke disengaged kind of lifts the volume.
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This is exactly my approach as well. Only mine is probably a bit less precise to the numbers, as I never look at the knobs.
Originally Posted by ingeneri
However, when playing my archies with floaters, alone in my guitar room . . both tone and volume are wide open. Because, I usually have the amp setting (Pro Reverb) at only 2 with just an ever so slight touch of verb . . and I just love the mix of amplified and acoustic tone. The tone stack on the Pro Reverb is set at 4 treble and 8 bass. X braced archies with floaters tend to be a bit bright, especially with the tone control wide open. With this setting on the 18" Unity that Aaron built for me, with a floating KA - BJB pup, the tone is just luscious.
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I'm one of the full volume and tone then adjust amp. While playing will adjust the guitar if needed for a song. will adjust the amp for room changes. I like the clarity and sensitivity when volume on guitar is up. Guess its from playing bass so long and using hands to adjust volume and tone.
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I guess I like to be contrary. I set my Deluxe Reverb at 4-5, then adjust the guitar volume, which usually is in middle of it's range, or even slightly less. I don't have tone knobs on most of my guitars so I set the amp as flat as possible, i.e. no treble boost. I use a similar sonic approach on my Polytone, although the knob positions are different. I always have lots of room to adjust the guitar volume up as the band or the crowd warms up. I like that the treble increases slightly as I increase the volume at the guitar.
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The tone and volume pots aren't at their best at the extremes of their travel. I am a right smack in the middle kind of guy. Between 4 and 8 on both guitar and amp and adjust either to fit within that range. There is a sweet spot where it all comes together.
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volume- 10
tone- 10
amp- 10
sound- amazing
i've heard a lot of methods and theories and i've tried a lot of stuff out, but that's basically what i prefer. i just get more everything from the guitar and amp with the guitar's control at 10 than i do setting them at 5-7 and compensating at the amp.
i just set the amp to give the the base tone or tone i'll use the most, and use the knobs or pedals to take it from there. each guitar is different, but i can always use the volume to clean things up or soften the attack and the tone to warm things up a little. i like having somewhere to go.
i don't play loud enough to get the full effect of the volume knob so i'm considering some treble bleeds. and i've swapped out all my pots for superpots, which aren't bad. generally better than what was there before. but the "everything on 10" ethos was partially inspired by growing up with crappy pots (and amps, and guitars, and...)
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in theory, pots full are affecting the true signal less, so yes, there is validity to that if you want the purest possible tone from the guitar. But then why not remove all pots from the signal path altogether and run pickup to jack? The pots are there for control/convenience and if you need to adjust your volume/tone at the gig and cannot be tweaking at the amp, they serve a very important purpose.
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Volume and tone full up, all the time. I'll use the controls as special effects but otherwise, I don't like fiddling with 'em. I set my amp controls and leave 'em. At most I might adjust the amp controls after the first couple of tunes, but I tend to avoid that as well.
Every player I've worked with who futzes with their volume knob inevitably turns up too loud, i.e. they sound check with the controls down, but after a few tunes, they forget to turn the volume back down to the same place after solos.
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On my archtops I usually run the amp pretty loud and have the guitar volume about 75% or so. Tone is usually dimed. I do the same actually with my solid bodies when I'm playing jazz. I find rolling off the guitars volume mellows the sound a bit, and I can get a brighter sound just but turning up the volume. I have found with floating mini humbuckers that they are often just too bright when the guitar volume is up all the way. I don't have this problem with the Vintage Vibe floating Charlie Christian pickups I'm using now. They have a nice 'honk' instead.
When I'm playing 'not' jazz and use an overdriven amp, I have the amp wound up with a decent bit of break up when the guitar volume is on 10. When the guitar vol is on 5ish it is generally almost totally clean . I find having this set up means I generally don't need to use overdrive pedals. BTW- the amp I use for this stuff is my Quilter Aviator Twin Ten. It's a good jazz amp, but has some of the sweetest overdrive I've heard from any amp.
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IMO the problem with volume & tone wide open is that when the bass & drums get louder . . . which seems inevitable in my world . . . then you have to mess with the amp. I prefer to start with guitar volume at 7 & leave myself some room to turn it up if needed. (and no, I'm not a loud player at all!)
I also like the trick of having the bridge pickup volume at 2 or 3 and using the switch to both pick ups to lower the volume down for rhythm parts. . .
Also, my bass player was having trouble finding good tones with his new humbucker equipped Music Man 5 string. I humbly suggested that he try turning down the volume from 10 on his bass & voila! A multitude of new tones are now available at his fingertips!
I don't need to dime my amp. I don't need to dime my guitar. It's jazz.
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Here's a video I made to answer one of the fundamental questions of jazz guitar:
"To touch or not to touch the tone knob of our guitars?"
Before making this video I was very orthodox about not turning down the tone knob on any guitar, in any situation. I stood on the position that this would only eat the guitars' charater and make every guitar sound more or less the same. On the other hand I know that good guitarist (including e.g. Lage Lund) often use their tone knobs. So let's give it a listen.
Straight up setup - Tal Farlow (a known tone, probably the best jazz guitar if it comes to "fat" tone/thunk i know of) into Deluxe Reverb 65 (not the best amp on earth but very popular among jazz guitarists). No effects. Channel 1, treble 1, bass 2-3.
Would you turn down the tone knob sometimes based on the below? :-)
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Some of the trebles are already cut by the pots even when the tone is at 10. Pot values depend on the manufacturer and will vary among brands and models. Different pickups will also have different brightness. Trebles also depend on strings, flat, round, half wound, material and age. So tone at 10 is not some universal constant. If nobody "touched their tone knobs" they would still have different tone values.
In the video tone at 7 sounded best to me. But a month later when your strings age more, tone would be at 8 to get the same sound. It also depends on the mix, room etc. I use guitar volume and tone knobs a lot. Very convenient way to adjust your sound. Even between comping and soloing, volume or tone can be changed.
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I think the trick is to get a nice, full, round, loud-enough sound out of the guitar's lowest notes *without* increasing muddiness. On my guitar, lowering the tone controls just increases mud. I find leaving them at max while reducing treble/shrillness/volume of the higher notes with amp eq or anything in the fx chain gives a much better result. By the way, I like the way that guy keeps time with his right hand when he's not picking.
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That guy is actually me ;-) I wasn’t aware I was doing that, thanks ;-) Originally Posted by strumcat
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As we all know, magnetic pickups have built-in resistance, capacitance, and inductance. They are designed to sound smoothest with a bit of resistance and capacitance added via volume & tone controls as well as instrument cable. I wouldn’t want to have a pickup designed to sound it’s best without volume and tone controls, since that would made it difficult to make adjustments as I play.
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Jazz tone is very subtle, mostly hands, not the gear.
Volume control on the guitar is the real tone control.
Tone control is mislabeled string change indicator...
can't set higher to sound right, time for new strings.
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On my Comins GCS-1, if I leave the tone control all the way up, the top two strings fizz a little bit, and I haven't figured out if it's possible to get rid of that. If I turn the tone control down (and most of the adjustment is in the first quarter of the rotation), the fizz goes away. Overall, my optimum setting for soloing is darker than my optimum for comping.
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I play in quiet settings mostly. My formula for good tone on my 175 tends toward 7 or 8 on the guitar tone control and pretty darn low on the volume control. I like to turn the amp up more than needed and take the guitar volume up from zero to maybe 3 or 4 -- whatever is the appropriate volume. Really there are so many different sounds to find in there. It's all very interactive, especially with a tube amp in the mix.
My days of guitar volume & tone set on 10 are long gone. I like 5 of this, 6 of that, 4 of another. Only time everything gets turned to 11 is when it's too damn loud !!!
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So many variables.
Deluxe is a great amp when the volume is over 3 which is really loud. Below that it is ice picky I found.
I think pick and picking technique are a massive factor.
I like having a Kenny Burrell kinda sound with Princeton vol 5, treble 5 or 6, bass at 3. Gibson 175 vol 8 or 9 tone at 7 to 10, these things vary with the room and the tune. That is the base sound.
I am really digging Gibson medium and heavy picks, they are really warm and thick sounding.
From there it is what I hear and I think my playing adjusts.
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Weird deluxe you’re playing Originally Posted by gggomez
I use my deluxe at home always between 4 and 5, guitar vol 7-9 which is a good home loudness. At gigs I usually have my deluxe around 7.
But I have a different preamp tube which is a bit quieter if I remember the previous state correctly
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Well yeah that is interesting. My rock and funk bands would not let me have my deluxe on 3 as was too loud way to loud but man it sounded sweet.. That was with a heavy hitting drummer and horns.
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