Our best tone knob is the volume knob

[GuyBoden]

In an ideal world, using software to decrease or increase volume, shouldn't effect the guitar's sound, because software uses no physical potentiometers. In reality this isn't always the case using software amps sims.

[jzucker]

i love the tone knob for what I do. I like the way the guitar sounds with the volume knob down a point or two but I almost always back the tone down to 75%. For your style, I understand not wanting that darker, metheny/hall-influenced tone

[John A.]

i love the tone knob for what I do. I like the way the guitar sounds with the volume knob down a point or two but I almost always back the tone down to 75%. For your style, I understand not wanting that darker, metheny/hall-influenced tone

Ditto. Also, if I start with the volume and tone both down a bit, I still have room to go louder or softer and darker or brighter depending on what the band is doing, the color I'm going for on the tune, etc. More (useful) options in a situation where I don't want to keep going back to the amp to set loudness.

[jzucker]

In an ideal world, using software to decrease or increase volume, shouldn't effect the guitar's sound, because software uses no physical potentiometers. In reality this isn't always the case using software amps sims.

i haven't found any difference in sound from digital volume controls. If you're talking about software amp sims and their gain/master controls, they are deliberately modeling the physics of the potentiometers in analog equipment.

[Jimmy Smith]

This makes limited (yet some) sense from a theory perspective.
Both pots are resistors. Resistances alone do nothing to the frequency response.
But because there is a tone cap in the circuit (as well as a reactive component of the internal impedance of the pickup, and perhaps other significant reactive elements like cable capacitance), the resistances of the tone and volume pot will affect how much of the signal with get filtered by the reactive circuit elements. Because the tone and volume controls are at different points in the circuit it will affect the frequency response differently.
(The volume pot's initial intention is obviously to decrease the volume but the changed frequency response is a side effect).
But you can also use words like "sound smoky" to describe your perception of the difference. That's perhaps more useful from a player's perspective.

No, for volume it is not only resistance, it is resistance to ground. If you have say a 500k volume pot, with the knob on 10 there is 500k of resistance preventing the signal from going to ground and getting cancelled. When you turn down, as the resistance to ground decreases, and as signal gets diverted to ground increasingly, highs will get bled off first, but there is not a strict cut off like with the tone. It dampens the entire range of higher frequencies.

If you want to hard wire this dampening effect into your guitar so you don't have to turn down, you can use a lower value volume pot such as 200k or even 100k. 100k is really warm and smoky. 200k would be warmer but still have some chirp.

With tone, the only path to ground for signal to get cancelled, is through a tone cap which blocks lows, and lets highs and usually mids through to ground. Yes, resistance is being used, but the pot functions by using capacitance, where higher signals determined by the cap get cancelled, while the lower frequencies stay the same.

If you want to get the tone knob to feel more like the volume effect, you can use a lower value cap which sets the cutoff higher. Most caps are 22nf. You can try 15, 10, or 6.8nf.

[orri]

and as signal gets diverted to ground increasingly, highs will get bled off first, but there is not a strict cut off like with the tone. It dampens the entire range of higher frequencies.

This part is inaccurate or misunderstood.
Lowering a resistance by it self will affect all frequencies equally. The highs will not get bled off first through this particular path to ground. But changing this resistance will change the relationship of the impedance of this path to ground (through the volume pot) relative to other paths to ground (such through the tone circuit), so it will change the proportion of the signal that takes the ground path through the volume pot (vs. the proportion that goes through the path with the tone cap which filters some frequencies, the reactance of the PU output impedance is also a factor to consider).

But yes, the volume pot is connected to ground, changing pot values and changing cap values will change the sound character and how the controls interact, and you're spot on how the tone control works.

[Average Joe]

I've found that the least tonally intrusive option is an active volume pedal. I'm using a Lehle, but I'm sure there are others