Re: Strat controls. "My theory is" (ref. Anne Elk) is that Leo intended the middle pickup to be the 'stock' position. Neck if you wanted it darker, bridge if you wanted brighter, which may explain the lack of tone control on the bridge pickup. 'Why would you want to make it darker? Use the middle pickup...'
Very interesting. I never considered that the middle was the "stock" position. Seems so many people skip right over it. Maybe most of us have missed the point!
This makes a lot of sense. I have a friend whose shop sells obscure vintage guitars, and almost all the electrics he sells have their main pickup (or only pickup if they have just one) right in the middle. Mainly Teisco, Harmony, Telestar, and Silvertone guitars
It took 20+ years of playing, AND most of all getting a TELECASTER, for me to realize this. It is something about the simplicity of the Tele-design that invited me to start turning the knobs. These days, it's an intergral part of my playing, my pedalboard and my amp. I turn the amp way brighter than I used to, use the levels on pedals differently than before and I almost never have either the tone or the volume on full on the guitar. Closing in on 50, years it is all about the simplicity for me and I kinda want to turn it even simpler. I've always wanted to treat myself a CS or a kind of "boutiquey" guitar. I am looking really hard at the Novo Solus. Thanks for another great show, and take care of yourselves and your loved ones in these strange times we live in. Same to everyone in the TPS-community.
Cocked wah on a 4 pot Gibson (les Paul, 335, etc): 1) get a decent overdrive sound from your amp 2) middle position (both pickups) 3) both volumes on 10 4) neck tone on 10, bridge tone on zero. Instant ‘money for nothing’ tone.
Just to say it's so good having TPS still showing up on a Friday brings a much needed sense of normality to a very weird time in all our lives. Your work is much appreciated
I wish I had learned how to maximise these controls when I was first learning to play. But a major issue I had - which until a few years ago I didn't realise was actually an issue - is that the left handed guitars I learned on had logarithmic pots installed, wired in reverse. So the most sensitive range of the pots was between 1-3, rather 7-10. I always wondered how some players managed to use the pots to shape their tone - it required so much precision when I tried it! Then one day I was doing a mod on my Mex Tele, checking the wiring against a diagram, and noticed my pot lugs were wired the wrong way. Long story short - I installed some reverse log pots, and now I have normal, intuitive control of my volume and tone. Interestingly, I recently purchased a lefty Gretsch which has normal control on all the volumes and tone. It cost double what the Tele cost back when I got it - maybe manufacturers are installing log pots in cheaper lefty guitars because they think it won't matter? Or maybe they've stopped doing it all together. The woes of the lefty guitarist!!
@@ThatPedalShow Hey Mick. The "woman tone" was renamed from its original name, which was the "womb tone" because the guitar sounded like it was coming from inside a female genitalia. So to be more polite, or politically correct, they started calling it the "woman tone." I know. I was there. Have a good one, man.
I never knew/realised about LH pots (or thought about them) until I went to buy a new wiring harness for my tele and had a conversation with the builder. I then realised that all my guitars (5) except 1, my jazzmaster, bought about a year ago, because I haven't modded it, are all rh pots and it does have a completely opposite sensitivity. Until it was mentioned when buying my harness I never copped it. Now I have a couple of guitars dialing the correct way and the rest dialing back the opposite way, bit strange when swapping guitars during playing. Thank you for pointing this out.
Great point raised Nathan. It's been a source of annoyance for me for years. Over time and many guitars through my hands I have found 99% of manufactures do this log pots wired backwards thing for lefties making the taper next to useless. Gibson tend to wire them to taper correctly, making the up/down rotation 'backwards'. Fender put reverse log pots in the professional series for lefties. To me the action of the taper is more important than the relative direction of rotation.
I think you are exactly right with your Eric Clapton bridge pick up sound. In his autobiography he talks about his breakthrough album with Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. He talks about getting his sound. Bridge pick up with the bass knob turned all the way up on his Les Paul. The amplifier is also turned all the way up so that is distorting. But the recording microphone is further away from the amp speakers, so they get a better recording, mic is not too close. Hit a note on the guitar, slowly move back and forth on the fret and let it sustain which then turns the distortion into Feedback. So both guitar and amp are on the edge of distortion, then combined that achieved his sound, which was also his live sound.
Dudes. After thirty years of playing I made this revelation about a year ago, It gave all my old guitars a whole range of new tones. Especially combined with not always being on max volume (another revelation) So nice to have it officially validated/explained. 👍
I've seen the master of the volume control five times live, and he was on it like Walter Rohrl caressing the throttle pedal of a 911 around the Nordschleife! That man was Gary Moore. Was just gonna type in about push/pull pots regarding coil splits & out of phase sounds when the DGT came out. lol. Great work fella's, much enjoyed the show. Thanks.
I’m using volume all the time, to the point where i don’t even notice that i do sometimes, it has become a part of it all. With tone, i found that when looping things, if i don’t have octaver on hand, coupled with compressor, rolling down tone can produce a decent bass sound, although apart from that almost never use it.
i use coil splits and high gain amps with the volume control rolled down for most clean sounds, tone control is invaluable bc it can get a bit spikey. if the audience are wincing, i'll take it down to 6 or 7
Just wanted to say a big thanks for the past few years of extraordinary education you've given us. I never thought I could learn so much about gear and its many uses, and how to get the most out of it. I genuinely have no idea where most of us would be without the wealth of knowledge you two chaps have passed on to us, so thank you so much for your hard work and enthusiasm you bring to every episode! P.S Could you do a revisit of the pedal order show from way back, featuring the Carpe Diem pedal of righteousness?
A "So I Married an Axe Murderer" reference?!?! How I do love you and your show! All the best to you and your families during these strange days. Thanks for keeping us laughing, and playing guitar, and on the search for inspiring tone. . . :)
Will come back to this one and spend some quality time. Just want to say this is so good for at home for my own enjoyment types like me. We don’t find it easy to know where to start with some things. This gives us that start. Thanks guys
I think you are exactly right with your Eric Clapton bridge pick up sound. In his autobiography he talks about his breakthrough album with Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. He talks about getting his sound. Bridge pick up with the bass knob turned all the way up on his Les Paul. The amplifier is also turned all the way up so that is distorting. But the recording microphone is further away from the amp speakers, so they get a better recording, not too close. Hit a note on the guitar, slowly move back and forth on the fret and let it sustain which then turns the distortion into Feedback. So both guitar and amp are on the edge of distortion, then combined that achieved his sound, which was also his live sound.
Absolutely confirmed the "never at 10 while cranking the amp" thing for me, at least on Les Paul. There are so many nuances of tone to be had as you move the volume pot and not just in the middle position.
I have had three basic electronics classes when I was younger and sat through numerous Amateur Radio classes and I finally understand the difference between capacitance values. I even sold them from a Radio Shack Franchise and always had to look them up. Thanks Dan.
The 'Strat Tone Control Wah' set one tone on 10 the other on 1 and switch back and forth between position 1 and 5 on the pickup switch. Great work TPS!
Absolutely loved this episode. If TPS has taught me anything, it’s how to use the guitar itself as the primary source of great tone. Oh and no pedal sounds as good as the one you know how to use!
I got a Gibson es335 and it’s one of the most versatile guitar ever build. If you know how to take advantage of the volume, tone pots and pickup selector then you have beast.
great episode! another cool thing for the woman tone on gibson guitars is to use the middle position and have the neck tone all the way off and blend the bridge pickup volume in for more top end clarity
I listen/watch your videos while drawing, it's fun, it's informative and it keeps me going during this quarantine. Love from Italy! Hope you're doing well.
Gary Moore was the king of this. Watch some live recordings like extended intro to seperate ways, thrill is gone or the messiah will come again and almost every phrase he adjusts the volume and tone controls and it’s just a thing of brilliance to watch, master of controlling his instruments tonal variations.
He was such a great player. Mick here. Was honoured to meet him once. He was one of those people who just had tone in him. Almost seemingly couldn’t play out of tune either. Fantastic player.
Wanna be blown away by using that volume control then watch early Phil Keagy of Glass Heart on electric guitar and also Terry Kath of Chicago work it. Oh yeah!!
In Tulsa a lot of the guitar shops call the backwards tele plate the "Okie Flip" I have it on mine because I'm used to Strats where the volume is closer.
I Thought this was one of your greatest shows, I have just recently started using my guitar controls for some of the things you explained, but ive got a long way to go and a short time to get there being 65 years old. Huge thumbs up guys.
It’s so easy to overlook what should common knowledge but really isn’t. I have found on both my tele and paul-I just keep it in the middle and work the volume and tone pots. For me, a revelation was using a fuzz face type circuit with my paul and use the volume of the neck pickup to dirty it up-glorious tone.
Eric Clapton used both pickups to create the " woman tone". Neck pickup volume rolled down to about 8, tone at 0, bridge pickup volume about 5, tone about 7. Then you vary the sound by rolling up or down on the neck pickup volume. Great show, as always! Cheers guys
Excited for this episode! Pulled my first electric guitar from the back of the closet yesterday... I don't think I'd played it, tuned it, or restrung it since 2000. Couple weeks after I bought it the Squier Affinity Strat took a bounce down 2 or 3 concrete stairs outside of my high school as I was waiting to catch the bus after. A buddy turned the corner as the thing slipped off the strap button and was like "time to put some stickers on it. I can honestly say I've played an unplayable guitar now: inch high action, tuners that go out any time you bend a string or that terribly stiff trem. But I've only used humbuckers in the past 20 years... that sounds weird to say... I plugged in to my stereo rig with is yesterday for S&Gs. Wow. Forgot what those position 2 and 4 on a strat can really sound like. It's been way too long. At 35 it's nice to think that there are still things that can inspire me today in a way that they did as a teenager feels pretty good. Sorry, I'm wordy. Lesson's I've taken away from this quarantine experience: open your horizons, embrace imperfections, take a step back and reconsider why you stick to the familiar.
We know, eventually, Dan and Mick will become one. Amazing to watch. Been following from the inception to the channel. Dan had all the guitar/pedal information; Mick the promotional skill and more comfortable in front of the camera. Over time, Mick has absorbed information while helping Dan become more comfortable in front of the camera. Today, their skill sets are interchangeable. Eventually, there will just be one: Danick Taylhardt.
The rapid volume swells Dan does at 38:30 is one of the coolest guitar techniques I've seen. It sounds almost like a bowed instrument. Could you please make a "Right in the earhole!" t-shirt? If you do I will definitely buy one!
I used to be in the camp of full volume on guitar with several overdrive pedals as my “gain stages”. Lately been using the volume knob and now only use one or two drive pedals (more for tonal variety rather than stages of gain), and I like it better. Makes playing more expressive and dynamic, plus less tap dancing with the pedalboard.
Always blows my mind when I hear great players say they don’t use the volume or tone knobs, especially the tone.. I’m always fiddling with mine and rarely have the tone above 6-8. One of my fav things to do is leave the neck tone on zero and switch back a forth from “woman” and bridge tones.. brilliant video fellas
Love this. My main guitar is a Les Paul with 50's wiring (so I learned today), and I'm constantly on its controls. The middle position with the blend is my main game. But I do it differently from what you did: Instead of dialing off the bridge I do it on dialing it off the neck. This way I achieve clarity in the low end while leaving it still overdriving the highs. It works beautifully through a Tweed Deluxe style amp. You should try it! Is it me or Mick was really connecting with that Les Paul for the first time ?
I do the volume rolled down thing all the time on my strat, although it's also partly to control the gain. I'll go all the way down to 4-5 for verses sometimes, chorus at 7-8, then up to 10 for the solo.
The day I tried my first fuzz face was the first day I've realized the importance of volume and tone controls. My whole sound relies on those controls; love it!
Just a quick thank you for the wet/dry plugging you guys been doing :-) Just wired my first w/d rig at home, Blackstar ht-1 dry and an old Roland GC 405 wet - sounds aaaamazing!!!! If someone still haven't tried it they should! BTW I got a nemesis, but you can route it internally wet/dry w both channels going through the ada so no phase issues. Radial Stagebug SB-6 took care of ground hum and such, and I got rid of the increased latency by moving a foot closer to the amps ;-)
Great vid guys! :) Re guitar controls, for me (as I'm an old git), the ideal set up is to set my amps to the optimum level (usually with the power valves open and breathing freely, the pre-amp just biting and pedals finishing it off) and then use my guitar's volume and tone knobs to control everything. I've found that there is a sweet spot that is almost never with the knobs all the way up.
I always rewire the second tone knob on Stratocasters to be working with the bridge pickup. That solved my problem of hating the bridge pickup on strats :)
Just dusted off “So I Married an Axe Murderer” last week as we dig through our old DVDs stuck at home. But did they roll off the low pass filter on Mike Myers? Woooo...man!
My 1987 Strat Plus has the TBX tone control which is totally worth a google, very useful in my experience gigging it this past year. NOW y'all are makin me need a 335!!!
Danny was a great player but live he was painful. It was an ice pick. You never wanted to be in front of his amps. I don’t know if he lost a lot of high end on his hearing or just never learned to roll over the tone knob on a Tele. He was also a brilliant car mechanic.
Excellent stuff gentleman! Perhaps the most underrated part of a guitar players arsenal, the controls! Anyone who wants to see how to masterfully use them, watch Derek trucks play, guy reaches for his pots after every lick and that attention to detail is what makes him such a master!
Cool tips! Another wah-wah effect with a strat: neck pickup tone 0, bridge tone 10, and playing with the pickup selector up and down. Sounds killer. BTW, that SG with one P90 sounds huge! Cheers!
I finally got my hands on a blues driver and dan's love is not unwarranted! Even playing into a small battery amp it completely changed the feel. With ep booster and tumnus I instantly clicked thinking about this low drive rock song that was played tele into fender loud, while I had squier strat into battery amp. It was so punchy and cleaned up well. Not that impressive alone, but those two combined the feel itself was worlds of difference. I would also mod the mid pickup tone to bridge since it gets never used (I recall Mick's blue had this done), but just the thought of it makes me cry for the strat pickguard. The other pickups sound so choked and I guess "woolly" and that bridge pickup alone is shrieking trebly, but it's the only one with the "open" top end sound, so all sense would tell to wire the tone to bridge instead. No idea why it wasn't the design back in the day. Conveniently enough the volume also rolls off a bit of those highs, but obviously you lose output. Btw do you think the default capacitor is a good choice for bridge pickup as well, or should it perhaps have a different value to more suit the purpose of bridge pickups tonal ranges you'd use? 0.047 µF sounds intriguing to have more variety if you wanna use the bridge with more versatility, cutting some of those mids as well. Yet the 0.022 µF sounds great for just getting that slight adjustment to "fix" it. I bet guitarists struggle with these options on daily basis and this is why I want a ready to use product where someone else decided on component values and other designs.
Mick, on talking about tone pots: "it's amazing how many people I meet who say 'I can't use that guitar the bridge pickup is so shrill'" Also Mick: says that the jazzmaster is too bright so changes out the volume pots ;) love the show guys hope you're both staying safe, looking forward to the next EP/home-recording vlogs!
Hahaha!!! Fair comment. Although they didn’t get changed in the end. I would say in my defence that once you’re down the road a bit with this, you start to have a preference for where the adjustment is. So a 1meg pot dialled back to 5 is subtly different from 250 dialled back to 8. Plus of course, you still want the wide open sound there.... anyway. It’s still stock. Ha!
If you want to know more tone cap values check out the episode with Simon Jarrett of Kingsley (there are time codes in the description). After seeing that, I changed the tone cap in my SG to a much smaller one (0.0022uF). It’s so good. Before I really never used my tone control; I like a bright sound with plenty of upper-mid cut, but this changed things. It does two things: 1) like a smaller pair of scissors, it makes it easier to take just a little off the top. Sure, you can get that with a bigger cap, but if you don’t ever use it all the way down it makes the former much easier. 2) it creates a cool flavour when rolled all the way off. By pushing the resonant peak of the pickup down into the heart of the mid range you get an effect not unlike a cocked wah (not the same, but not miles off). I love it.
Great advice lads. Lots of gain and treble on the amp + bridge pickup tone rolled down on the Strat bridge pickup = Jeff Beck. Tone rolled down on the Tele bridge pickup = Steve Cropper and Vince Gill
I used to have an LP with P-rails and I loved rolling back both volumes, P-90 on the bridge, rail on the neck. As near as damn it acoustic tones. Fantastic for strumming some Alice in Chains. I might get some for my SG.
Oh and quick question for VCQ..... My wife and I are moving to Nashville in a few weeks and I’ll have a basement to get some nice guitar tones going, however I’m having trouble getting a sound I like out of my 50 watt Reason (kind of Marshally but not as much gain). I’m just not a fan of turning the master down, and it’s way too loud to absolutely crank so I’d like your opinion on some options. 1. Crank the amp and use an attenuator. 2. Use a valve preamp like the Sheriff pedal from Victory. 3. Get a smaller wattage amp that I can turn up. I’ve never used an attenuator or a preamp pedal, and I can’t go try any now due to COVID lockdown so I’d like to get your personal opinions since I trust your expertise. I want a cranked Marshall sound without blowing my head off, but I don’t know how an attenuator will affect the overall tone and feel, the demos of the Victory pedal seem to be more compressed than I want, I’m trying to not go spend the money on another amp, and I fear there are no good options. Any help or other options you suggest? I know you guys get your dirt from pedals mainly, but I’m just having trouble getting a sound I want from pedal overdrive. Thank fellas, sorry for being long winded!
All my guitars have a bass control as well (G&L and Reverend provide it standard), which is extremely useful to tighten up an overdriven or distorted sound or to get really thin clean tones which work well with phaser or vibe pedals.
My favourite trick is definitely using the volumes to blend both pickups on a two pickup Gibson style guitar. It really brings new tonal horizons to those instruments!
I love this video, and wish I had it 15 years ago! I didn't figure out the knobs until a few years after I started playing, and honestly THAT was the moment at which I really started playing ELECTRIC guitar, instead of treating it like an acoustic with an amp and pedals. The day I figured out that I could set the amp to give me a bright lead tone on my Les Paul neck pup at 9, use the volumes to clean up and the tones to get back into typical Les Paul territory, and also get a pretty good Tele imitation on the bridge with the volume down and the tone full up, I completely stopped using channel switching.
I saw someone do a "wah simulator" trick recently that I hadn't seen before. Using a strat with the selector on the neck pick up, strike a note and then immediately flick the selector down to the bridge pick up. Takes a few tries to get used to and get it right, but it does sound a lot like playing a note with a wah cocked back and then quickly rocking it forward.
I’ve learned so much about using the volume pot from you guys. On a guitar with Gibson-style controls you almost get a channel-switching type of effect. A good example: I have a sort of tele with humbuckers and Jimmy Page wiring. I thought that there were too many options in it, and actually still do. But today I was playing Charmless Man by Blur and discovered that with a fuzz pedal and the guitar controls I could get all the sounds I needed for that song. One pickup full blast for the fuzzy stuff, the other coil split and volume rolled down for the cleaner or overdriven parts. Also riding the volume on the coil split pickup. But what a revelation! I guess I don’t need to take that switching scheme out of the guitar after all!
I learned from Jeff Beck (I think) to turn a strat volume down just a hair to like 9 and it takes just a touch of brightness away. I do it all the time. Small adjustment can make a difference.
I use coil taps on humbuckers a lot. My PRS is set up with a Freeway 3x3 orbital 6 way switch so all my split coil sounds are hum cancelling. But I’ve also found that hi output humbuckers tend to split really well. I’ve some Bare Knuckle Cold Sweats in my 83 Yamaha SG1000 and it sounds lovely. The PRS \m/ pickups sound amazing coil tapped too.
This video is one of your best, in terms of getting the point across. Not that you don't do that in other videos, but this one was especially good. It's up there with VCPI, and that was a superb episode! :)
On a traditionally wired Strat with no bleed you can get an interesting variation of the "woman-tone" and it's a sound that I use a lot. With the switch in position 4, (bridge+middle) you roll all the tone off the middle pickup into a distortion pedal or cranked amp. You get a sort of band-pass effect. The degree varies from one Strat to another, I've had some which sound like a cocked wah and others less pronounced. With the tone control fully off there is some sort of weird resonance involving the tone cap and the Strat will really sustain and sing, but turning the tone knob up even slightly spoils that. (I think that we've introduced Resistance into the resonant circuit and thereby damped it) So that's a good sound. But I also do use the position 4 to tame the spikey bridge pickup with a little use of the middle pickup tone control as well.
Great episode topic guys! Lately I have been setting up my gear to have the brightness I like in the neck position, and taming the harshness of the bridge with its tone control. I'm not very fast at it yet, but controlling the gain with the guitar volume can be magical too. Whether it's into drive/fuzz pedals or a cranked amp, it can work really well. It can be a bit of a balancing act to have the amp volume high enough, and maybe slightly compressing, that you don't lose too much volume when backing it down. As it turns out, that's when I really appreciate the strat 2-4 positions the most. When the amp is loud enough, the volume drop isn't so drastic
All of my favorite sounds are a tweed amp turned at least half way up, with the guitar volume ANYWHERE below “10”. The guitar is brightest (harshest) on 10, and everything from 9 down seems to be the same flavor of treble in my rig, just varying degrees of gain/volume. Mostly using a telecaster with a flat pole pickup. P.S.- I do hit “10” when using a fuzz face.
One of my favorite volume control tricks is doing a two channel type sound on a Gibson wiring control style, where I turn the volume on the neck pickup pretty low and the bridge pick up to nine and use the pickup selector switch to get a dirty and clean tone
Mick doesn't get enough credit for his country chops. I see you and the country swing! I know personally even those "simple" interchordal bends are very challenging. That music deserves more celebrating imo
Hi - Re. the PRS treble bleed - modded one for a guy who didn't like the added brightness at low volume. It turns out they are a single capacitor - we added a resistor in parallel (OK, it modifies the taper of the volume pot) and it evened out the response. There are a lot of variations of the treble bleed circuit - it is another rabbit hole!
You can also do some pretty cool things with fuzz with the guitar controls. But I believe you have already discussed this in another video. Great vid as always.
Re: Strat controls. "My theory is" (ref. Anne Elk) is that Leo intended the middle pickup to be the 'stock' position. Neck if you wanted it darker, bridge if you wanted brighter, which may explain the lack of tone control on the bridge pickup. 'Why would you want to make it darker? Use the middle pickup...'
Very interesting. I never considered that the middle was the "stock" position. Seems so many people skip right over it. Maybe most of us have missed the point!
This makes a lot of sense. I have a friend whose shop sells obscure vintage guitars, and almost all the electrics he sells have their main pickup (or only pickup if they have just one) right in the middle. Mainly Teisco, Harmony, Telestar, and Silvertone guitars
I dig the middle strat pickup. Most well rounded pickup position out there. Good for leads or rhythm, good clean or dirty.
Buck And Evans interesting. Ex-Television guitarist Richard Lloyd does exactly this.
Can anyone honk Anne Elk?
'Right in the earhole!' - how is this not a t-shirt yet?
Peter Richardson Probably because people might get hearing AIDS if they’re not careful.
If you ask me, its due to it being either too suggestive... or not suggestive enough!
Mads Bolding Peter Kay and Chorley FM comes to mind! 😝
I was thinking exactly this. I'd buy that shirt. Make it happen, TPS!
Air outta ur F hole
make that into a shirt
It took 20+ years of playing, AND most of all getting a TELECASTER, for me to realize this. It is something about the simplicity of the Tele-design that invited me to start turning the knobs. These days, it's an intergral part of my playing, my pedalboard and my amp. I turn the amp way brighter than I used to, use the levels on pedals differently than before and I almost never have either the tone or the volume on full on the guitar.
Closing in on 50, years it is all about the simplicity for me and I kinda want to turn it even simpler. I've always wanted to treat myself a CS or a kind of "boutiquey" guitar. I am looking really hard at the Novo Solus.
Thanks for another great show, and take care of yourselves and your loved ones in these strange times we live in. Same to everyone in the TPS-community.
Cocked wah on a 4 pot Gibson (les Paul, 335, etc):
1) get a decent overdrive sound from your amp
2) middle position (both pickups)
3) both volumes on 10
4) neck tone on 10, bridge tone on zero.
Instant ‘money for nothing’ tone.
Just to say it's so good having TPS still showing up on a Friday brings a much needed sense of normality to a very weird time in all our lives. Your work is much appreciated
I thought the volume knob was on a guitar so that 5% of guitar players could complain about how the other 95% don’t use it. This was eye opening.
We love this. Thank you! :0)
I wish I had learned how to maximise these controls when I was first learning to play. But a major issue I had - which until a few years ago I didn't realise was actually an issue - is that the left handed guitars I learned on had logarithmic pots installed, wired in reverse. So the most sensitive range of the pots was between 1-3, rather 7-10.
I always wondered how some players managed to use the pots to shape their tone - it required so much precision when I tried it! Then one day I was doing a mod on my Mex Tele, checking the wiring against a diagram, and noticed my pot lugs were wired the wrong way.
Long story short - I installed some reverse log pots, and now I have normal, intuitive control of my volume and tone.
Interestingly, I recently purchased a lefty Gretsch which has normal control on all the volumes and tone. It cost double what the Tele cost back when I got it - maybe manufacturers are installing log pots in cheaper lefty guitars because they think it won't matter? Or maybe they've stopped doing it all together.
The woes of the lefty guitarist!!
That is a fascinating subject that I genuinely knew nothing about. Mick here. Glad you got it sorted!
@@ThatPedalShow Hey Mick. The "woman tone" was renamed from its original name, which was the "womb tone" because the guitar sounded like it was coming from inside a female genitalia. So to be more polite, or politically correct, they started calling it the "woman tone." I know. I was there.
Have a good one, man.
I never knew/realised about LH pots (or thought about them) until I went to buy a new wiring harness for my tele and had a conversation with the builder. I then realised that all my guitars (5) except 1, my jazzmaster, bought about a year ago, because I haven't modded it, are all rh pots and it does have a completely opposite sensitivity. Until it was mentioned when buying my harness I never copped it. Now I have a couple of guitars dialing the correct way and the rest dialing back the opposite way, bit strange when swapping guitars during playing. Thank you for pointing this out.
Great point raised Nathan. It's been a source of annoyance for me for years. Over time and many guitars through my hands I have found 99% of manufactures do this log pots wired backwards thing for lefties making the taper next to useless.
Gibson tend to wire them to taper correctly, making the up/down rotation 'backwards'. Fender put reverse log pots in the professional series for lefties. To me the action of the taper is more important than the relative direction of rotation.
I feel you man
Check out Jim Campilongo for someone who does some great things with a tone control on a vintage Tele.
I think you are exactly right with your Eric Clapton bridge pick up sound. In his autobiography he talks about his breakthrough album with Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. He talks about getting his sound. Bridge pick up with the bass knob turned all the way up on his Les Paul. The amplifier is also turned all the way up so that is distorting. But the recording microphone is further away from the amp speakers, so they get a better recording, mic is not too close. Hit a note on the guitar, slowly move back and forth on the fret and let it sustain which then turns the distortion into Feedback. So both guitar and amp are on the edge of distortion, then combined that achieved his sound, which was also his live sound.
#10 The in between Tele. So simple yet so awesome.
Dudes. After thirty years of playing I made this revelation about a year ago, It gave all my old guitars a whole range of new tones. Especially combined with not always being on max volume (another revelation) So nice to have it officially validated/explained. 👍
I've seen the master of the volume control five times live, and he was on it like Walter Rohrl caressing the throttle pedal of a 911 around the Nordschleife!
That man was Gary Moore.
Was just gonna type in about push/pull pots regarding coil splits & out of phase sounds when the DGT came out. lol.
Great work fella's, much enjoyed the show. Thanks.
Walter Rohrl 👍
That was a RUF CTR yellowbird! Bad ass video I love that one. Back when Porsche was squirrely.
I’m using volume all the time, to the point where i don’t even notice that i do sometimes, it has become a part of it all. With tone, i found that when looping things, if i don’t have octaver on hand, coupled with compressor, rolling down tone can produce a decent bass sound, although apart from that almost never use it.
i use coil splits and high gain amps with the volume control rolled down for most clean sounds, tone control is invaluable bc it can get a bit spikey. if the audience are wincing, i'll take it down to 6 or 7
Yeah, same here...sometimes I adjust the volume knob when playing unplugged 🤣
Alper Ademi Right! I know what you mean.
Just wanted to say a big thanks for the past few years of extraordinary education you've given us. I never thought I could learn so much about gear and its many uses, and how to get the most out of it. I genuinely have no idea where most of us would be without the wealth of knowledge you two chaps have passed on to us, so thank you so much for your hard work and enthusiasm you bring to every episode! P.S Could you do a revisit of the pedal order show from way back, featuring the Carpe Diem pedal of righteousness?
Thank you Adon! A revisit to pedal order would be our pleasure. :9)
Roy Buchanan was a master of using his guitars controls
Richard Thomson you beet me to it
Yes, he was a master of that and much ore. What a great guitarist, what a sad life. RIP Roy, we miss you.
A "So I Married an Axe Murderer" reference?!?! How I do love you and your show! All the best to you and your families during these strange days. Thanks for keeping us laughing, and playing guitar, and on the search for inspiring tone. . . :)
Very comforting words in opening guys! Thank you for this. Big hello from Canada and we are many to follow you :)
Will come back to this one and spend some quality time. Just want to say this is so good for at home for my own enjoyment types like me. We don’t find it easy to know where to start with some things. This gives us that start. Thanks guys
I think you are exactly right with your Eric Clapton bridge pick up sound. In his autobiography he talks about his breakthrough album with Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. He talks about getting his sound. Bridge pick up with the bass knob turned all the way up on his Les Paul. The amplifier is also turned all the way up so that is distorting. But the recording microphone is further away from the amp speakers, so they get a better recording, not too close. Hit a note on the guitar, slowly move back and forth on the fret and let it sustain which then turns the distortion into Feedback. So both guitar and amp are on the edge of distortion, then combined that achieved his sound, which was also his live sound.
If only you guys were on you tube ,,, 40 years ago. Sooooo much knowledge to be had from you guys !!!!!
Ah, but we wouldn’t have known anything back then. ;0)
That Pedal Show but I’m talking about time warp Star Trek kinda stuff ,,, 😳
Absolutely confirmed the "never at 10 while cranking the amp" thing for me, at least on Les Paul. There are so many nuances of tone to be had as you move the volume pot and not just in the middle position.
I have had three basic electronics classes when I was younger and sat through numerous Amateur Radio classes and I finally understand the difference between capacitance values. I even sold them from a Radio Shack Franchise and always had to look them up. Thanks Dan.
The 'Strat Tone Control Wah' set one tone on 10 the other on 1 and switch back and forth between position 1 and 5 on the pickup switch. Great work TPS!
Great, an episode that doesn't trigger my GAS as much, greatly appreciated! Great episode!
Absolutely loved this episode. If TPS has taught me anything, it’s how to use the guitar itself as the primary source of great tone. Oh and no pedal sounds as good as the one you know how to use!
I got a Gibson es335 and it’s one of the most versatile guitar ever build. If you know how to take advantage of the volume, tone pots and pickup selector then you have beast.
great episode! another cool thing for the woman tone on gibson guitars is to use the middle position and have the neck tone all
the way off and blend the bridge pickup
volume in for more top end clarity
Nice!
This should be good as everyone seems to forget that their tone and volume control knobs exists on their guitar.
I re-wired my tone knobs out of my LPs! lol
@@wodenoftheangles3339 Haha well that doesn't apply to you then 😊
Not everyone
@@drlaim no you're right not everyone, but a hell of a lot, i shouldn't of said everyone.
OR alot of play on cheap shit guitars where when you turn the knobs it goes from 10 to 10 to 10 to 2 no matter how much you turn them 😆
I listen/watch your videos while drawing, it's fun, it's informative and it keeps me going during this quarantine. Love from Italy! Hope you're doing well.
Wonderful show y’all. Hunkered down and jammin’ greetings from Kentucky!
Gary Moore was the king of this. Watch some live recordings like extended intro to seperate ways, thrill is gone or the messiah will come again and almost every phrase he adjusts the volume and tone controls and it’s just a thing of brilliance to watch, master of controlling his instruments tonal variations.
He was such a great player. Mick here. Was honoured to meet him once. He was one of those people who just had tone in him. Almost seemingly couldn’t play out of tune either. Fantastic player.
That Pedal Show My absolute favorite player.
Wanna be blown away by using that volume control then watch early Phil Keagy of Glass Heart on electric guitar and also Terry Kath of Chicago work it. Oh yeah!!
In Tulsa a lot of the guitar shops call the backwards tele plate the "Okie Flip"
I have it on mine because I'm used to Strats where the volume is closer.
I Thought this was one of your greatest shows, I have just recently started using my guitar controls for some of the things you explained, but ive got a long way to go and a short time to get there being 65 years old. Huge thumbs up guys.
It’s so easy to overlook what should common knowledge but really isn’t. I have found on both my tele and paul-I just keep it in the middle and work the volume and tone pots. For me, a revelation was using a fuzz face type circuit with my paul and use the volume of the neck pickup to dirty it up-glorious tone.
So happy about this topic being discussed!
that mid shift in the middle position on es335 with the neck slightly backed off is a revelation!
Mick: we're gonna stick with classinc guitar's
Dan: NICE!!
😂the enthusiasm in that made me laugh
Eric Clapton used both pickups to create the " woman tone". Neck pickup volume rolled down to about 8, tone at 0, bridge pickup volume about 5, tone about 7. Then you vary the sound by rolling up or down on the neck pickup volume. Great show, as always! Cheers guys
He’s on record saying it could be either. But sure, the middle position is a nice version of it.
TPS - That Potentiometer Show, Great episode as always!
I would say let's call it "That Pot Show", but...
Excited for this episode! Pulled my first electric guitar from the back of the closet yesterday... I don't think I'd played it, tuned it, or restrung it since 2000. Couple weeks after I bought it the Squier Affinity Strat took a bounce down 2 or 3 concrete stairs outside of my high school as I was waiting to catch the bus after. A buddy turned the corner as the thing slipped off the strap button and was like "time to put some stickers on it. I can honestly say I've played an unplayable guitar now: inch high action, tuners that go out any time you bend a string or that terribly stiff trem. But I've only used humbuckers in the past 20 years... that sounds weird to say... I plugged in to my stereo rig with is yesterday for S&Gs. Wow. Forgot what those position 2 and 4 on a strat can really sound like. It's been way too long. At 35 it's nice to think that there are still things that can inspire me today in a way that they did as a teenager feels pretty good. Sorry, I'm wordy. Lesson's I've taken away from this quarantine experience: open your horizons, embrace imperfections, take a step back and reconsider why you stick to the familiar.
We all know about this stuff but we don't dare to try it ... This was an inspiration!
We know, eventually, Dan and Mick will become one. Amazing to watch. Been following from the inception to the channel. Dan had all the guitar/pedal information; Mick the promotional skill and more comfortable in front of the camera. Over time, Mick has absorbed information while helping Dan become more comfortable in front of the camera. Today, their skill sets are interchangeable. Eventually, there will just be one: Danick Taylhardt.
The rapid volume swells Dan does at 38:30 is one of the coolest guitar techniques I've seen. It sounds almost like a bowed instrument.
Could you please make a "Right in the earhole!" t-shirt? If you do I will definitely buy one!
I used to be in the camp of full volume on guitar with several overdrive pedals as my “gain stages”. Lately been using the volume knob and now only use one or two drive pedals (more for tonal variety rather than stages of gain), and I like it better. Makes playing more expressive and dynamic, plus less tap dancing with the pedalboard.
Yep!
"There was never any Santa for me, man" Aaaaaaaand pathos for the win! So good.
Always blows my mind when I hear great players say they don’t use the volume or tone knobs, especially the tone.. I’m always fiddling with mine and rarely have the tone above 6-8. One of my fav things to do is leave the neck tone on zero and switch back a forth from “woman” and bridge tones.. brilliant video fellas
Love this. My main guitar is a Les Paul with 50's wiring (so I learned today), and I'm constantly on its controls. The middle position with the blend is my main game. But I do it differently from what you did: Instead of dialing off the bridge I do it on dialing it off the neck. This way I achieve clarity in the low end while leaving it still overdriving the highs. It works beautifully through a Tweed Deluxe style amp. You should try it! Is it me or Mick was really connecting with that Les Paul for the first time ?
I do the volume rolled down thing all the time on my strat, although it's also partly to control the gain. I'll go all the way down to 4-5 for verses sometimes, chorus at 7-8, then up to 10 for the solo.
The day I tried my first fuzz face was the first day I've realized the importance of volume and tone controls. My whole sound relies on those controls; love it!
thank you for this video it really changed my perspective on guitar and breathed new life and inspiration to my playing
Definitely a Top Episode, gentlemen. Thank you.
Just a quick thank you for the wet/dry plugging you guys been doing :-) Just wired my first w/d rig at home, Blackstar ht-1 dry and an old Roland GC 405 wet - sounds aaaamazing!!!! If someone still haven't tried it they should!
BTW I got a nemesis, but you can route it internally wet/dry w both channels going through the ada so no phase issues. Radial Stagebug SB-6 took care of ground hum and such, and I got rid of the increased latency by moving a foot closer to the amps ;-)
Great vid guys! :) Re guitar controls, for me (as I'm an old git), the ideal set up is to set my amps to the optimum level (usually with the power valves open and breathing freely, the pre-amp just biting and pedals finishing it off) and then use my guitar's volume and tone knobs to control everything. I've found that there is a sweet spot that is almost never with the knobs all the way up.
I always rewire the second tone knob on Stratocasters to be working with the bridge pickup. That solved my problem of hating the bridge pickup on strats :)
Yep. That’s how mine have been since forever. Except recently, which is weird.
I love that you now have a pedal for the horn...3:22😋 Magical intro Dan!
Your latest episodes (tape delay, now this one...) are just exactly what interests me most, thank you !
Great vid. Very interesting and really Fun to watch.... A brilliant and fairley easy way to ad some interest to your playing. Thanks guys
Just dusted off “So I Married an Axe Murderer” last week as we dig through our old DVDs stuck at home. But did they roll off the low pass filter on Mike Myers? Woooo...man!
My 1987 Strat Plus has the TBX tone control which is totally worth a google, very useful in my experience gigging it this past year. NOW y'all are makin me need a 335!!!
I always run lots of reverb before a very gainy amp and volume control on guitar effects gain but also amount of reverb, so much variety in sounds!
Mick, whispers under breath:
"I wish I could honk Danny Gatton."
Sorely missed. Such a massive talent.
Danny was a great player but live he was painful. It was an ice pick. You never wanted to be in front of his amps. I don’t know if he lost a lot of high end on his hearing or just never learned to roll over the tone knob on a Tele. He was also a brilliant car mechanic.
Calum Nichols He really meant that...
Excellent stuff gentleman! Perhaps the most underrated part of a guitar players arsenal, the controls! Anyone who wants to see how to masterfully use them, watch Derek trucks play, guy reaches for his pots after every lick and that attention to detail is what makes him such a master!
Otherworldly musician. Mesmerising. Love Mr Trucks!
Cool tips!
Another wah-wah effect with a strat: neck pickup tone 0, bridge tone 10, and playing with the pickup selector up and down. Sounds killer.
BTW, that SG with one P90 sounds huge!
Cheers!
Juan Martin Reborati yes! The Rory Gallagher move!
Another cool trick with a gibson style guitar is both pickups, volumes full, neck tone full, bridge tone all the way off with a good bit of gain.
I finally got my hands on a blues driver and dan's love is not unwarranted! Even playing into a small battery amp it completely changed the feel. With ep booster and tumnus I instantly clicked thinking about this low drive rock song that was played tele into fender loud, while I had squier strat into battery amp. It was so punchy and cleaned up well. Not that impressive alone, but those two combined the feel itself was worlds of difference.
I would also mod the mid pickup tone to bridge since it gets never used (I recall Mick's blue had this done), but just the thought of it makes me cry for the strat pickguard. The other pickups sound so choked and I guess "woolly" and that bridge pickup alone is shrieking trebly, but it's the only one with the "open" top end sound, so all sense would tell to wire the tone to bridge instead. No idea why it wasn't the design back in the day. Conveniently enough the volume also rolls off a bit of those highs, but obviously you lose output. Btw do you think the default capacitor is a good choice for bridge pickup as well, or should it perhaps have a different value to more suit the purpose of bridge pickups tonal ranges you'd use? 0.047 µF sounds intriguing to have more variety if you wanna use the bridge with more versatility, cutting some of those mids as well. Yet the 0.022 µF sounds great for just getting that slight adjustment to "fix" it. I bet guitarists struggle with these options on daily basis and this is why I want a ready to use product where someone else decided on component values and other designs.
What a great show, I have to make myself believe I’m not a know it all sometimes because I ALWAYS learn something from these shows! Keep ‘em coming!
Mick, on talking about tone pots: "it's amazing how many people I meet who say 'I can't use that guitar the bridge pickup is so shrill'"
Also Mick: says that the jazzmaster is too bright so changes out the volume pots
;) love the show guys hope you're both staying safe, looking forward to the next EP/home-recording vlogs!
Hahaha!!! Fair comment. Although they didn’t get changed in the end. I would say in my defence that once you’re down the road a bit with this, you start to have a preference for where the adjustment is. So a 1meg pot dialled back to 5 is subtly different from 250 dialled back to 8. Plus of course, you still want the wide open sound there.... anyway. It’s still stock. Ha!
At first I thought 'nahhh' but it turns out to be one of the best TPS episode. Very informative and funny.
If you want to know more tone cap values check out the episode with Simon Jarrett of Kingsley (there are time codes in the description). After seeing that, I changed the tone cap in my SG to a much smaller one (0.0022uF). It’s so good. Before I really never used my tone control; I like a bright sound with plenty of upper-mid cut, but this changed things. It does two things: 1) like a smaller pair of scissors, it makes it easier to take just a little off the top. Sure, you can get that with a bigger cap, but if you don’t ever use it all the way down it makes the former much easier. 2) it creates a cool flavour when rolled all the way off. By pushing the resonant peak of the pickup down into the heart of the mid range you get an effect not unlike a cocked wah (not the same, but not miles off). I love it.
Cooool!
Oh so you ROLL them!!! I've been pushing on them for years. Thanks guys, grat tone as usual.
Great advice lads. Lots of gain and treble on the amp + bridge pickup tone rolled down on the Strat bridge pickup = Jeff Beck. Tone rolled down on the Tele bridge pickup = Steve Cropper and Vince Gill
I used to have an LP with P-rails and I loved rolling back both volumes, P-90 on the bridge, rail on the neck. As near as damn it acoustic tones. Fantastic for strumming some Alice in Chains. I might get some for my SG.
Oh and quick question for VCQ..... My wife and I are moving to Nashville in a few weeks and I’ll have a basement to get some nice guitar tones going, however I’m having trouble getting a sound I like out of my 50 watt Reason (kind of Marshally but not as much gain). I’m just not a fan of turning the master down, and it’s way too loud to absolutely crank so I’d like your opinion on some options. 1. Crank the amp and use an attenuator. 2. Use a valve preamp like the Sheriff pedal from Victory. 3. Get a smaller wattage amp that I can turn up. I’ve never used an attenuator or a preamp pedal, and I can’t go try any now due to COVID lockdown so I’d like to get your personal opinions since I trust your expertise. I want a cranked Marshall sound without blowing my head off, but I don’t know how an attenuator will affect the overall tone and feel, the demos of the Victory pedal seem to be more compressed than I want, I’m trying to not go spend the money on another amp, and I fear there are no good options. Any help or other options you suggest? I know you guys get your dirt from pedals mainly, but I’m just having trouble getting a sound I want from pedal overdrive. Thank fellas, sorry for being long winded!
Amazing "So I married an ace murderer" reference Dan. So happy at this moment.
Hahaha love the empty wine bottles on Dan’s desk during the capacitor interlude 🤣 cheers!
All my guitars have a bass control as well (G&L and Reverend provide it standard), which is extremely useful to tighten up an overdriven or distorted sound or to get really thin clean tones which work well with phaser or vibe pedals.
My favourite trick is definitely using the volumes to blend both pickups on a two pickup Gibson style guitar. It really brings new tonal horizons to those instruments!
You two are so giddy with this stuff that is a pleasure to watch! Learned so much!!
I love this video, and wish I had it 15 years ago! I didn't figure out the knobs until a few years after I started playing, and honestly THAT was the moment at which I really started playing ELECTRIC guitar, instead of treating it like an acoustic with an amp and pedals. The day I figured out that I could set the amp to give me a bright lead tone on my Les Paul neck pup at 9, use the volumes to clean up and the tones to get back into typical Les Paul territory, and also get a pretty good Tele imitation on the bridge with the volume down and the tone full up, I completely stopped using channel switching.
I saw someone do a "wah simulator" trick recently that I hadn't seen before. Using a strat with the selector on the neck pick up, strike a note and then immediately flick the selector down to the bridge pick up. Takes a few tries to get used to and get it right, but it does sound a lot like playing a note with a wah cocked back and then quickly rocking it forward.
Nice!
I’ve learned so much about using the volume pot from you guys. On a guitar with Gibson-style controls you almost get a channel-switching type of effect. A good example: I have a sort of tele with humbuckers and Jimmy Page wiring. I thought that there were too many options in it, and actually still do. But today I was playing Charmless Man by Blur and discovered that with a fuzz pedal and the guitar controls I could get all the sounds I needed for that song. One pickup full blast for the fuzzy stuff, the other coil split and volume rolled down for the cleaner or overdriven parts. Also riding the volume on the coil split pickup. But what a revelation! I guess I don’t need to take that switching scheme out of the guitar after all!
I learned from Jeff Beck (I think) to turn a strat volume down just a hair to like 9 and it takes just a touch of brightness away. I do it all the time. Small adjustment can make a difference.
Jeff turns it down to 0 most of the time.
Just a really enjoyable episode. Def lock down essential.
One of the best TPS shoes ever... and I've seen them all. 🙏🤘🖤🔥
I use coil taps on humbuckers a lot. My PRS is set up with a Freeway 3x3 orbital 6 way switch so all my split coil sounds are hum cancelling. But I’ve also found that hi output humbuckers tend to split really well. I’ve some Bare Knuckle Cold Sweats in my 83 Yamaha SG1000 and it sounds lovely. The PRS \m/ pickups sound amazing coil tapped too.
This video is one of your best, in terms of getting the point across. Not that you don't do that in other videos, but this one was especially good. It's up there with VCPI, and that was a superb episode! :)
On a traditionally wired Strat with no bleed you can get an interesting variation of the "woman-tone" and it's a sound that I use a lot.
With the switch in position 4, (bridge+middle) you roll all the tone off the middle pickup into a distortion pedal or cranked amp. You get a sort of band-pass effect. The degree varies from one Strat to another, I've had some which sound like a cocked wah and others less pronounced.
With the tone control fully off there is some sort of weird resonance involving the tone cap and the Strat will really sustain and sing, but turning the tone knob up even slightly spoils that. (I think that we've introduced Resistance into the resonant circuit and thereby damped it)
So that's a good sound.
But I also do use the position 4 to tame the spikey bridge pickup with a little use of the middle pickup tone control as well.
This was a super helpful video gents. Been playing for 10 years and didn’t know half the stuff you talked about. Keep up the fine work.
🙂🙏
Great episode topic guys! Lately I have been setting up my gear to have the brightness I like in the neck position, and taming the harshness of the bridge with its tone control. I'm not very fast at it yet, but controlling the gain with the guitar volume can be magical too. Whether it's into drive/fuzz pedals or a cranked amp, it can work really well. It can be a bit of a balancing act to have the amp volume high enough, and maybe slightly compressing, that you don't lose too much volume when backing it down. As it turns out, that's when I really appreciate the strat 2-4 positions the most. When the amp is loud enough, the volume drop isn't so drastic
Fantastic as always gentlemen, thank you!
All of my favorite sounds are a tweed amp turned at least half way up, with the guitar volume ANYWHERE below “10”. The guitar is brightest (harshest) on 10, and everything from 9 down seems to be the same flavor of treble in my rig, just varying degrees of gain/volume. Mostly using a telecaster with a flat pole pickup. P.S.- I do hit “10” when using a fuzz face.
You guys are so talented. We are all so lucky to have you.
OMG, was not aware of Tip #5. Will have to try that today!
Jim Campilongo is a master on that Tele Wah Wah trick using a Princeton. Magic!
One of my favorite volume control tricks is doing a two channel type sound on a Gibson wiring control style, where I turn the volume on the neck pickup pretty low and the bridge pick up to nine and use the pickup selector switch to get a dirty and clean tone
Mick doesn't get enough credit for his country chops. I see you and the country swing! I know personally even those "simple" interchordal bends are very challenging. That music deserves more celebrating imo
Having a lovely time watching this week's show.
Hi - Re. the PRS treble bleed - modded one for a guy who didn't like the added brightness at low volume. It turns out they are a single capacitor - we added a resistor in parallel (OK, it modifies the taper of the volume pot) and it evened out the response. There are a lot of variations of the treble bleed circuit - it is another rabbit hole!
Don’t know what 11 people thumbs downed this but seriously guys, one of the best videos this year! Amazing tricks and examples! Cheers!
You can also do some pretty cool things with fuzz with the guitar controls. But I believe you have already discussed this in another video. Great vid as always.