Amp up high, guitar down low?

ICBM

Van_Hayden said:

As for caps, slight difference between construction other than that I agree it's value changes that make a difference.

But booteek caps, most are Russian pio caps that are very nice, fill an amp up with a dozen as couplers and you'll hear a difference. One on a tone pot in a guitar you don't even turn I'm not so sure. Ive done blind tests with some very picky guitarists on this. Not sure they believed the results. I've got hundreds of PIO if any body wants any. I don't charge for dressing mine up in wax....

In amps, yes - there are very good reasons why due to the high voltages which are a large fraction of the cap rating, the self-distortion that causes, and that the caps are passing the 'kept' part of the signal.

In guitars, no - it's provable if you set up a simple direct-switching test, and there are no good physics reasons anyway. The voltage is a tiny fraction of even the lowest cap rating, and the part of the signal that would be affected even if there was any effect is exactly that which the cap is passing to ground and hence would negate itself.

Just because there's a real effect in one application doesn't mean there is an another very different one!

The really funny one is those "reissue Bumblebee" caps that all the purists swore sounded miles better until someone cut one open and found a modern polypropylene cap inside .

Van_Hayden

One test I did with a couple of hazz players the bumblebees sounded the worst....after the ceramic disc. They decided there wasn't much to choose between the rest but did pick out the two worst and agreed on them!

Dave_Mc

ICBM said:

I don't think there's a right answer, it depends on the amp, the guitar (although this is usually fixable with wiring tweaks if it loses too much when you roll it off), and what you're trying to do with it.

Agreed (also would add in pedals as well, fuzz for example is the classic where it's almost essential to use the guitar's volume control unless you want a wall of fuzz all the time ) )

ICBM said:

Decent quality pots with proper tapers are essential, 50s wiring helps as well, but the most flexible is the "amp-type" circuit where the tone control is both a conventional treble roll-off and a variable treble-pass on the volume pot. When the volume control is down a long way the tone control can then actually brighten the sound, if you want.

Do you have a link to a schematic for that? That sounds interesting.

(I agree with what you're saying regarding the pots etc. too, apart from the fact I've never actually got round to trying 50s wiring. I'm guessing the end result of it is like a slightly less extreme treble-pass circuit, that's what I've heard, anyway?)

ICBM

Van_Hayden said:

One test I did with a couple of hazz players the bumblebees sounded the worst....after the ceramic disc. They decided there wasn't much to choose between the rest but did pick out the two worst and agreed on them!

Even those must have been slightly different values.

I A/B'd several different types using a switch in the guitar so I could actually swap them on the fly, including ceramics and Bumblebees, and there was no difference. As in none whatsoever, at any volume or tone setting, with my head right in front of the speaker of a very clear amp.

There is simply no physical reason it can be otherwise.

Dave_Mc said:

(I agree with what you're saying regarding the pots etc. too, apart from the fact I've never actually got round to trying 50s wiring. I'm guessing the end result of it is like a slightly less extreme treble-pass circuit, that's what I've heard, anyway?)

Much less extreme - really all it's doing is slightly turning up the effective value of the tone control as the volume goes down, so it reduces the treble roll-off a bit.

The 'amp-like' tone control circuit is quite simple:

Connect the top terminal of the volume control to the middle terminal of the tone control as normal in 'modern' wiring with the cap on the tone control.

Connect the tone cap between the bottom terminal of the tone control and ground as normal.

Then connect the treble-pass cap between the top (normally unused) terminal of the tone control and the middle terminal of the volume control.

Van_Hayden

To be fair I can't remember if I checked the actual values...

Dave_Mc

ICBM said:

Much less extreme - really all it's doing is slightly turning up the effective value of the tone control as the volume goes down, so it reduces the treble roll-off a bit.

The 'amp-like' tone control circuit is quite simple:

Connect the top terminal of the volume control to the middle terminal of the tone control as normal in 'modern' wiring with the cap on the tone control.

Connect the tone cap between the bottom terminal of the tone control and ground as normal.

Then connect the treble-pass cap between the top (normally unused) terminal of the tone control and the middle terminal of the volume control.

Excellent, thanks

Adam_MD

I found 50s wiring worked particularly well with a dark neck humbucker in my les Paul. It's a paf style alnico ii, with modern wiring I had to have the tone control all the way up or it was a dark horrible mess but when I switched to 50s wiring using the same pots the tone control was a lot more usable.

Dave_Mc

sounds good. I think I've heard before (correct me if I'm wrong) that as well as helping with keeping treble as the volume control is turned down, it makes the tone control have a smaller sweep (or something like that)?

Adam_MD

I found it has a much better taper than when it was modern. With modern wiring I turned it down a little and the treble rolled off very quickly. The 50s wiring is usable all the way down, the change being much more gradual. It also interacts with the volume control really nicely. Sometimes with the volume down when I roll the tone back up you get more volume, its hard to describe but on my les Paul I really like it.
I did, however, try it on my tele and changed it back pretty quick I preferred the sweep better with modern. How much is down to the pickups and how much to the guitar I don't know. I keep meaning to try it on my strat to see which I prefer with it (master tone with dummy tone pot not wired to anything).

photek

I have tried it that way several times but in a dense mix I don't seem to be able to get the right amount of control over the volumes. My preference is to have a few volumes set with channels and boost pedals. Saying that I do drop the volume on my DGT to about 9 on a few tracks just to take a bit of gain off but that is because it has a lovely treble bleed and great balance on the volume pot. It would be a different story if either I was the only guitarist or we went through the PA.

koneguitarist

I think with certain amps especially you have to play them as much as you play the guitar, as they also become an instrument. Old non master volume Marshalls for instance. But as ICBM said, it depends on the setup you use. I love using my volume and tone control on my Esquire, but struggle like hell with Gibsons( partly down to pot placement), but have allways thought Fender guitars had better controls to start with than Gibson, now I know how to tweak things to suit me, I don't have so many issues. Surprised how many people still just use effects or boost switch on amp to get their change.

ICBM

Dave_Mc said:

sounds good. I think I've heard before (correct me if I'm wrong) that as well as helping with keeping treble as the volume control is turned down, it makes the tone control have a smaller sweep (or something like that)?

Not quite - it makes the volume and tone controls much more interactive as Adam said - so sometimes you need to readjust one when you've changed the other. Some people find this annoying - I would guess this is why Gibson changed it.

It also depends to an extent on your guitar cable - which is the actual cause of the treble loss because it has a capacitance itself just like the tone cap (but smaller). The lower the capacitance of the cable, the less difference there is between modern and 50s.

RocknRollDave

EricTheWeary said:

For some reason I was thinking about a guy I used to know who was a really good blues-rock guitarist (he had played with John Mayall amongst others) and he used to have his amp (some kind of Vox head he had or whatever was to hand) wacked up stupidly loud but then his guitar volume knobs (he used Guilds with buckers IIRC) always down at about 5. I first twigged to this when he borrowed my stuff for a jam and then set it up like that. I played my strat through my little Mustang with the guitar on about 4 earlier today with the amp turned up fairly loud and it sounded really good, if maybe lacking bite on the top strings.
Anybody here routinely play like this? That is with the guitar on about 5, never turning up anywhere near 10.

I've always been an "everything on 10 on the guitar" person, myself, but very recently watched a Warren Haynes video where he was demonstrating the exact thing you talk about here - and the tone he was producing with both the vol and tone knobs of his LP down as far as 5 was exactly the tone I have been after, so I tried it with my PRS yesterday, which has 2 x Tonerider humbuckers in...and it sounded glorious!  Trying it out live on Friday for the first time.....

mike_l

I believe David Gilmour uses low-output pup's for similar reasons, Ie he lets the amp, and outboard gear set the tone, rather than having the pup's set the tone and not be able to vary it as much.

 

Incidentally, I like to roll back the volume, but usually set things at somewhere between 6-7 or full up. I also like to tweak the tone pots.

Depending on the guitar.

 

 

Dave_Mc

Adam_MD said:

I found it has a much better taper than when it was modern. With modern wiring I turned it down a little and the treble rolled off very quickly. The 50s wiring is usable all the way down, the change being much more gradual. It also interacts with the volume control really nicely. Sometimes with the volume down when I roll the tone back up you get more volume, its hard to describe but on my les Paul I really like it.
I did, however, try it on my tele and changed it back pretty quick I preferred the sweep better with modern. How much is down to the pickups and how much to the guitar I don't know. I keep meaning to try it on my strat to see which I prefer with it (master tone with dummy tone pot not wired to anything).

Thanks- that sounds like I'd like it. That's the thing I'm not too keen on tone knobs, as you say, often they're all or nothing very quickly. Even better quality pots etc. suffer (though normally not just as much). I normally only really use the tone knob on guitars that really need them (like teles) for that reason.

You make a good point about the style of guitar maybe playing a part, too- you hear about 50s wiring a lot on Gibson-style guitars, but not so much on Fender-style guitars...

RocknRollDave

RocknRollDave said:

EricTheWeary said:

For some reason I was thinking about a guy I used to know who was a really good blues-rock guitarist (he had played with John Mayall amongst others) and he used to have his amp (some kind of Vox head he had or whatever was to hand) wacked up stupidly loud but then his guitar volume knobs (he used Guilds with buckers IIRC) always down at about 5. I first twigged to this when he borrowed my stuff for a jam and then set it up like that. I played my strat through my little Mustang with the guitar on about 4 earlier today with the amp turned up fairly loud and it sounded really good, if maybe lacking bite on the top strings.
Anybody here routinely play like this? That is with the guitar on about 5, never turning up anywhere near 10.

I've always been an "everything on 10 on the guitar" person, myself, but very recently watched a Warren Haynes video where he was demonstrating the exact thing you talk about here - and the tone he was producing with both the vol and tone knobs of his LP down as far as 5 was exactly the tone I have been after, so I tried it with my PRS yesterday, which has 2 x Tonerider humbuckers in...and it sounded glorious!  Trying it out live on Friday for the first time.....

Further to my post above, I played the entire gig like this last night and it was a total revelation! Best live tone I've ever had but moreover such a HUGE difference in picking dynamics just by altering my attack. Really widened the parameters, it's totally shocked me.

This was, admittedly, a humbucking guitar in a trio format so tonight I'm trying the same thing with my Tele in my regular two-guitar line-up and I'm not expecting quite such marked results...but fingers crossed...

EricTheWeary

There is a Haynes interview in the new Guitarist and it is mentioned. Just with my bit of experimentation and gorilla fist style playing there is definitely a difference in the dynamics, although it wouldn't suit every style.

axisus

I like to use volume and tone all the time, and often have vol at 5ish. I don't go for effects at all other than reverb and delay, I prefer to get one sound I like and alter it with vol and tone.

rockmonster

I'm a heathen I use the volume pots on all my guitars flat out and use the amp channels to give me the boosts I need. I don't have much time to bugger about with volume pots in my band. Occasionally I turn the guitar vol down for a bit of slide!

PolarityMan

Im another vol and tone on full guy. Everything else just sounds worse.