What do YOU do with a tone control?

Mark Bracewell · Post by **Mark Bracewell** » 7 Jul 2009 7:47 pm

I like a knob that does something - the more it can do, the better. I hear many people say "I run both wide open" and I see many people use that ubiquitous tone control either all the way open or all the way shut. It's rare that I see somebody using the tone control to get some special 'in-between' sound.

How about you? Is your tone control useful, and if so, is the sweet spot somewhere in between? Can you find that spot in the middle of a gig? Does the tone control give you just 2 sounds, or more?

Ray Montee (RIP) · Post by **Ray Montee (RIP)** » 7 Jul 2009 8:44 pm

My guitar mounted tone control is usually set somewhere at about the 3/4's ON position. From there, I rotate it in minute measures until I find the exact sweet spot to which you refer.

In western swing, much like Noel Boggs, Speedy West,
Jerry Byrd and countless others, I use it with a single or series of bar slams while rotating it rapidly from a full bass to a full treble tone....in a quick fashion.

And, like Jerry Byrd, I used it to 'talk', rotating it from a full bass tone to a full treble, done ever so deleicately in order to get the correct response.
Jerry Byrd did this quite well on "Wabash Wah-Wah Blues" and "St. Louis Blues", to name but two.

Exploration is the solution and practice is the perfection. The tone pot must be highly responsive however in order to get the affect you might be seeking.

The JERRY BYRD-FAN CLUB.com/ on Jerry's Guitar's page will explain it in more detail.

Mark Bracewell · Post by **Mark Bracewell** » 7 Jul 2009 9:19 pm

Wow Ray, see, I'm glad I asked because you came back with something that's not even in my universe! You are The Man. Nice Tux too, by the way

OK, gotta rethink my circuit... 3 knobs are in my future

Todd Clinesmith · Post by **Todd Clinesmith** » 7 Jul 2009 9:38 pm

Mark,
To get a drastic effect use a linear taper tone control. Most use a 1 meg , or 100k potentiometer. I have some NOS Allen Bradleys in 1 meg linear taper I will offer for sale in the for sale section next week.
With a linear taper pot your full sweep from bass to treble will come quickly.. in about 1/3 of a turn. The next 2/3rds are basically non audible.... at least to my ears. With an audio taper pot you will have a fine adjustment of tone, from one end to the other.
As Ray says exploration is the solution.
Todd

Billy Tonnesen · Post by **Billy Tonnesen** » 7 Jul 2009 9:56 pm

Great explanation by Ray Montee.

Even after they incorporated a sideways tone control in the Foot Pedal Volume, I could never get the same effects and feelings of using the Guitar mounted control with your right hand. I bet all us old timers experienced this.

Mark Bracewell · Post by **Mark Bracewell** » 7 Jul 2009 10:05 pm

Thanks Todd! I like the idea of a linear taper to pack a lot of change into a small movement of the knob.

I'll fess up, I have a pretty good grasp of what you can do to squeeeze all sorts of interesting tones out of a combination of resistance, capacitance and the inductance of a given pickup. What I'm most curious about is what players are doing with what they have.

Tone can be a very subtle, powerful thing to a discerning player, as Ray points out very, very well, and I am neither a subtle nor a powerful player, but I know how to make stuff, I just want to make stuff that's useful!

I have a project where the tone control can give you a dozen or so pretty different sounds, but all by itself that wouldn't satisfy Ray who wants to be able to fade them in and out - that's not something I ever do, and I was amazed and frankly I'm a little bit in awe of it. It happens a lot as I read this forum. I have to say you all are really remarkable folks.

Fred · Post by **Fred** » 8 Jul 2009 5:27 am

I use mine all the time in conjunction with the volume knob to get the "right" tone for the moment.

I've thought about using a switch with 6 discrete steps. Each one could be tuned individually with it's own capacitor and resistor. The biggest problem I see with that is I have to be able to turn it with one finger and hit the right spot. I haven't found a switch that will work for me.

Fred

Bill Hatcher · Post by **Bill Hatcher** » 8 Jul 2009 7:01 am

Todd Clinesmith wrote:Mark,
To get a drastic effect use a linear taper tone control. Most use a 1 meg , or 100k potentiometer. I have some NOS Allen Bradleys in 1 meg linear taper I will offer for sale in the for sale section next week.
With a linear taper pot your full sweep from bass to treble will come quickly.. in about 1/3 of a turn. The next 2/3rds are basically non audible.... at least to my ears. With an audio taper pot you will have a fine adjustment of tone, from one end to the other.
As Ray says exploration is the solution.
Todd

I never liked or used linear taper pots. Guitar makers did not use these either. You have to turn them too far down to get any effect. The audio taper pot is better as it gives you more tone roll off at the end of the rotation so you just back it off a small amount for a big difference in tone. You can also to "wah" sounds much easier with audio taper. That is why they are harder to find than the linear taper pot. Much easier to get linear as they were not as popular with builders as the audio taper.

Bob Hickish · Post by **Bob Hickish** » 8 Jul 2009 7:15 am

This says it all

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHlmsMhcdrM

John Burton · Post by **John Burton** » 8 Jul 2009 7:54 am

I never have my volume or tone pots all on (dimed out)on any of my guitars, steel or otherwise.
Personally, I always look for the sweet spot depending on the amp settings, volume I'm playing, room size, etc. Having them full on wouldn't allow for this.
On steel, I'll sometimes roll tone pot down from a more sharp, treble-y sound to a more dull tone, or vice versa, depending on the song I'm playing. Some stuff sounds better with a bitey tone, other things sound better with a mellow/jazz guitar kinda' thing.
In short, I always "dial" in a sound before I start playing on any guitar, steel or otherwise.

Twayn Williams · Post by **Twayn Williams** » 8 Jul 2009 9:26 am

With my Chandler RH-2 / Princeton combo I keep the tone knob rotated up about 1/4 turn. That pickup / amp combo is so bright that the tone knob is an absolute requirement to keep from shattering the ears. With the exact same setting on the amp and either my Tele or Strat, the tone knobs stay wide open. Gives you some idea how bright that Chandler is. Still, with the tone rolled down it's a really sweet sound that I like alot and there's plenty of room to do boo-wahs and bar slams (not that I'm any good with either of those techinques

)

On my Tele or Strat if I want to slightly mellow the tone I usually turn down the volume knob just slightly. This will "soften" the tone slightly and in a much sublter manner than the tone control is capable of.

With distortion or fuzz, I use the tone and volume controls quite a lot to control the upper partials.

b0b · Post by **b0b** » 8 Jul 2009 9:50 am

I sometimes adjust the tone control for the sound I want in a specific song or even for a solo. It's good to have a bit of treble in reserve for when you need to really cut through the band.

Charley Wilder · Post by **Charley Wilder** » 8 Jul 2009 6:01 pm

Mine stays on five all the time. It's probably frozen there! I'd better check it out.

If I want to change tones I do it at the amp. And it stays that way until my mood changes. Could be years.

Mark Bracewell · Post by **Mark Bracewell** » 8 Jul 2009 6:14 pm

Twayn Williams wrote:... if I want to slightly mellow the tone I usually turn down the volume knob just slightly. This will "soften" the tone slightly...

This is a great tip everyone should know about. I read about it somewhere on Jason Lollar's web site. Very useful.

Al Salmon · Post by **Al Salmon** » 8 Jul 2009 11:00 pm

Because my SX S6 has a 'Strat' type pickup, I gotta wind the tone back to keep things manageable and less strident.

Ray Montee (RIP) · Post by **Ray Montee (RIP)** » 9 Jul 2009 4:33 pm

If you want to HEAR what a TONE CONTROL KNOB can do
when used creatively....you might be interested in visiting the JERRY BYRD-FAN CLUB.com/ site.

On the opening page of the site is a newly posted song: "Gold Coast Blues"....... You can hear a number of different tone control applications if you listen closely; both single string and three chord playing.

You also have an excellent opportunity to HEAR what a Rickenbacher pre-war Bakelite is capable of delivering with regard to SUSTAIN.

Alan Brookes · Post by **Alan Brookes** » 9 Jul 2009 4:54 pm

You wouldn't be able to do that on any of the lap steels that I build. I never put volume or tone controls on the instrument, I assume that the player will use a foot-operated external volume control and the tone controls on the amplifier.

Now you've made me think that I should.

In fact, maybe I should put the tone control on a palm lever so that you could adjust it with your palm while playing.

Mark Bracewell · Post by **Mark Bracewell** » 9 Jul 2009 5:10 pm

I have a friend who is in a wheel chair, needless to say foot pedals aren't workable for him. One day we were yakking about this and thought of Irish bagpipes - a spring loaded 'pedal' could go under your right arm (suitably moisture proof of course

) Somehow arms and torso just seem more capable of expression to me than foot pedals for things like tone (or whatever, we were thinking of effects expression pedals at the time).

Eugene Cole · Post by **Eugene Cole** » 9 Jul 2009 7:35 pm

I run external effect often for various reasons. EQ is the most commonly used effect that I know of. The tone knob is typically just a primitive EQ which offers treble roll-off.

I prefer to to do most of my tone selection through coil-tapping and I use the tone knob only to fine-tune the effect of the coil taps. Of course older instruments do not usually offer the luxury coil-tapped pickups so I use the tone knob instead. I find that I make adjustments to the tone knob frequently while I am playing and almost without thinking about it. I almost NEVER run the tone knob wide open on an instrument which has one.

One of the features which I liked on my Sierra was that the guitar came with 3 coil taps on the pickup which increased the tonal options which were readily available at any time. Additionally the Sierra had a passive treble roll-off with a disable switch. It was nice to have an alternate tone preset which could be invoked on the fly.

What I find is that when I want to to have a short duration brighter sound (like playing a lead) I use the coil-taps (when available) but I have also tried disabling the treble roll-off while I played the lead and then re-invoking the treble roll-off afterwards.

Regarding effects which can be done using a tone knob. One can decrease the treble roll-off as on slides up the neck creating a Wolf Whistle like effect. One can do a similar bur not the same thing with a volume knob instead.

I have often thought that it would be fun to install a parametric EQ in a Steel with an easily accessible knob which would allow me to shift the center frequency instead of merely decreasing the the treble roll-off when I did the Wolf Whistle effect. But ideas much like river water flow past us faster than our time and budget will allow us to test them.

-E

The Steel Guitar Forum

What do YOU do with a tone control?

What do YOU do with a tone control?

About those tone controls......................

Some good examples of tone control ..........CONTROL

The Irish Spring Pedal

Passive, Parametric, and coil tpping