A Good Read...

[Southpa]

I never was into all the tone knobs on my amp, kinda complicated and archaic at the same time. And I like to get the full benefit of my guitar's output strength and "true" sound. Anyway, this article deals with amps, but it goes for guitars too. I don't think I'll bother with a tone control on my next guitar build. Just because its on the schematics doesn't mean its gott be so.

http://www.myrareguitars.com/macktonecontrols.mht

[MCH]

Wasn't able to access that page, came up as formatting jibberish.

But I mused about the tone control on the guitar a while back. Posted a question on this subject. I find the tone control on my guitars used very littlle. So on the build I'm on now I'm dispensing with the tone controls. I bought a pedal equalizer and find a lot more useful control.

I have a feeling I won't be missing them.

[GregP]

I always leave my tone controls at full. Passive tone controls are teh useless. Dunno why they persist. Any tone controls in the future will be active or nothin'.

Greg

[Mr Alex]

If it counts for anything, I generally have my tone control about at 2-3. I guess you could say its a sweet spot or something like that. The pickups in my shop guitar have a really wide frequency response, and if I didn't have the tone control as a filter for the high end, I wouldn't have my hearing. I don't know enough about pickup winding to get the mids and low end of my pickups, without getting a tele like treble end.

Alot of people don't seem to get that the guitars tone control is not the same as the treble on their amp, and that it's meant to be that way. And you don't have to stick to traditional cap values either. It doesn't HAVE to make the guitar sound like poo when your roll it off. You need to match it to the pickups. It is a filter for your pickups, not a substitute for the treble on your amp.

Alex

[Mickguard]

My Epiphone Sorrento definitely sounds better with the tone at about 6 --goes for both pickups. But on my other guitars, I never monkey with the tone control. And the only real reason I use the volume is to kill the sound on the songs when I don't play guitar.

So on the next build I'm planning on using one of those active circuits from Artec --I have the VTC. I don't know what it'll sound like yet, but at least it's push/pull, I can always turn it off if need be.

And on the tele I just finished, I added in a treble bleed on the volume...so now instead of lowering the volume (and killing the highs), it seems to suppress some of the lows, gets a nice crisp sound to it. On the other hand, I don't think I could do volume swells with it (but it's a tele, so that's not really possible anyway)

I couldn't open that page either--what's an .mht?

[Southpa]

Sorry about the page, its part of the monthly newsletter I get from "Myrareguitars.com" Heres the proper link, http://www.myrareguitars.com/march2007newsletter.html . The article is : "Tone Controls – Tone and Gain Sucking Leeches?"

Edited March 11, 2007 by Southpa