The Master of His Guitar

[Tim]

I have bugged everyone about certain amp settings for that “perfect tone”. My next question deals with using the guitar volume and/or tone control(s) to obtain different sounds (clean, crunch, fuzz, and distortion). I was hoping some Fretters would share the techniques they use.

This post does not concern with pedals and amp settings. Well maybe a slight mention of adjusting the amp for the delicate breakup point. The post strictly deals with controlling the sound by just using the guitar’s controls on the fly. Does anybody play with just guitar and amplifier and no effect? In my minds eye, this kind of guitar player would be a true master of his instrument.

[warren0728]

tim....i'm sure there will be more detailed answers here than mine but the one thing i've learned since getting the epi valve jr (which only has a volume control...nothing else) is to turn the volume on the guitar all the way up and then set the amp to the distortion level that sounds good to you....then by rolling off the volume of the guitar without touching anything else you can clean up the sound. Crank the volume on the guitar back up and you're back in distortion heaven.

That's about all the expirementing i have done with those guitar knobs!

ww

[Tone2TheBone]

Tim,

I play my amps with no effects. I usually play either semi-clean semi-dirty to all out clean. I just prefer the natural sweet sounds of the guitar and amps in this mode. I wouldn't have dared do that when I first started out. I used to hide behind distortion, heaven forbid that I ever tried playing without it! Or played without a ton of 80's Chorus and Flange or Compression!

Nelskie and Warren have it right anytime they mention the one knob wonder of the Valve Jr. In it's simplest form the amp will not hide your mistakes which I think helps you to become a better player and listener. Tubes compress in a way that is much different than ss amps. SS amps sound good too in their own way...but pick attack and finger attack on a tube driven guitar is much different. Messing with your guitar's volume and tone knobs yields a whole bunch of tonalities. Just the other day Nelskie and I discussed this very subject.

[jpfeifer]

Hi Tim,

A lot of this depends on how responsive your amp and guitar are. A good tube amp will be very sensitive to your guitar volume, but a crappy one is usually not as sensitive to your guitar tone or touch.

I've found that the best sound for me is to get the distortion level that I want from the amp with my guitar volume all the way up, then back off the guitar volume to clean up the sound a little . This way the amp will tend to respond more to my touch so that it has a little more meat when I play harder and cleans up when I play softer. But some amps just don't respond this way and you have to turn your guitar volume all the way up just to get a decent tone.

Guitar tone controls tend to be very much dependant on the quality of your guitar pickups and tone circuits in the guitar. Some guitars have a very useful tone control whereas others only sound good with the tone control all the way up. I usually turn down the tone control to roll off the high frequencies when I'm playing cleaner stuff like Jazz. But I turn the tone control all the way up when I want brighter sounding tones for country, surf music, etc. I have a guitar with P90 pickups which has a very nice control circuit. When I turn down the tone control it seems to get a more Eric Clapton-ish tone for lead sounds, so I end up using the tone control even with distorted sounds.

-- Jim