Do you use your TONE pot (dial) on your PRS guitar?

How low do you ever roll down your tone pot while playing? (Lowest position.)


  • Total voters
    62
I use the tone pots on mine all the time, usually start around 7-9 and see what's working.

What's the difference between using the knobs on your guitar or using gain/bass/treble on your amp?

Actually, there's a big difference due to how they control high frequencies. The amp's tone control can be used to balance frequencies without killing them, but the guitar's tone control kills all high frequencies above the cutoff point.

Amp tone controls operate around a single turnover frequency, and affect other nearby frequencies depending on how wide their 'Q' is. So an amp's frequency cutoff point stays the same and the particular frequencies affected are set by the designer of the circuit. The turnover frequency doesn't change. And with the amp you can reduce frequencies without completely removing them. The amp's tone controls can be less drastic.

A guitar's tone control works a little differently, more like a lowpass filter. In other words, the cutoff point at which the high end rolls off changes as control is lowered, and nothing is heard above that cutoff point.

In addition, lowering the treble control on your amp will cut high frequencies at different points than the tone control on your guitar and doesn't necessarily kill all high frequencies above the turnover point. This allows quite a bit of shaping if you use both controls in conjunction with one another.

For example, let's say you want to hear a crisp upper midrange, but want to cut a bit of whatever frequency sounds shrill through your speaker cab (or because of the way the acoustics in a room sound). You'd use the amp's tone control to adjust that, and still have the option to cut different frequencies with the guitar.

So if the amp's high frequency tone control is centered at around 2 kHz; you could cut at that frequency a little, but it will still leave high frequencies in the 'Q' around that tone control alone, simply reduce frequency balance a bit.

If you cut off the frequencies above 2 kHz with your guitar's control, you will hear no (or more significantly reduced) high frequencies above 2 kHz. They disappear.

Thus the frequency response you hear can vary quite a bit with amp tone controls plus guitar tone controls, more so than using only one or the other. It's great to have the option to make subtle changes this way.
 
That's very interesting, thanks. The subject is a bit underrated imo. There are so many guides/YouTube video's about amps, pickups and how to dial amps. But very few guides for example about how you can get good sounds out of an amp with specific guitar tone knob settings.
 
I use the tone knob more on my PRS than I have on any other guitar I’ve owned. I find the taper pretty subtle which I prefer. I usually use it on my 24-08 the most just to take the edge off the highs when I’m playing clean. I don’t think I’ve ever gone lower than 5 on it and 6-8 is usually the sweet spot for what I want.
 
That's very interesting, thanks. The subject is a bit underrated imo. There are so many guides/YouTube video's about amps, pickups and how to dial amps. But very few guides for example about how you can get good sounds out of an amp with specific guitar tone knob settings.

Yes, it's truly an underrated thing. In the studio lots of mixers (include me) stack more than one EQ because different EQs operate at different frequencies, and you can get pretty surgical tailoring the sound using more than one. So we might use an EQ on a channel, but another EQ on a bus, and perhaps a third EQ on the output bus. Then in mastering, it's pretty unusual not to use a separate EQ there. So one instrument can be EQ'd in several processing steps.

There are also EQs like the classic Pultecs that have separate boost and cut controls that operate on slightly different frequencies where you can both boost a frequency, and cut another frequency in the same tone range, to shape your tone (kind of like what I described with the interaction of the guitar and amp tone controls.

Incidentally, what happens in recording and mixing partially explains why it's often difficult to 'nail' the sound of something you hear on a record: It's because there are so many steps in processing, between the mic's own frequency curve, EQ, Compression, and any other effects that might get thrown into the mix.

Every amp's controls are different (and different designs have different frequency curves), pickups have different frequency curves, tone pots are different, some people use treble bleed caps etc. Then there's the whole question of all speakers sounding different from each other, speaker cabs and how they affect what you hear, and even how the room's acoustics affect sound (we hear as much of the reflected sound in the room as we do the direct sound from the speakers, sometimes more).

So it's one of those 'have to experiment' things where if it sounds good to you, it's good!

One thing I do when I get a new amp, speaker cab, or guitar is turn every control all the way in both directions, and see how each control affects what I'm hearing. Then I run combinations. Only takes a few minutes, and I get a pretty good idea of how things are going to work. I have lots of friends, including studio guys, who don't do this, and since it only takes a minute or two, I kinda wonder why. Seems like a player would want to know.

Beats me why this seems to be so ignored so many players! :eek:
 
I came up playing Telecasters, starting in the 70s. There was no internet, and a lot of the 60s and 70s Tele`s were bright (we weren't hip on the 1 Meg pots), so we all became 'knob twidlers'. Some time in the late 70s, I think it was Craig Anderton who had a monthly column in Guitar Player magazine, wrote an instructional article on treble bleeds - it was an epiphany! So, no matter the guitar now, I always use all of the controls at my disposal.
 
What about the neck pickup? (Sorry, I mean the bass pickup. :p ) Doesn't anyone ever roll off the tone pot on the neck pickup to get that "woman tone" thing going on that people talk about?

Yea I do that with my 594 pretty frequently. It has a maple neck so I think rolling the tone off helps cut back on the extra brightness that the maple brings.
 
The answer to this used to be a firm NO; I pretty much just needed one volume control dimed. Over the past number of years, I have done alot more playing/jamming with my father who did his gigging in the 60's and 70's. He rides his volume pots and tone knobs to get a variety of tones and said that was pretty common back then. I guess it has rubbed off, because I definitely use the volume + tone controls to get different tones from my PRS's now.
 
What about the neck pickup? (Sorry, I mean the bass pickup. :p ) Doesn't anyone ever roll off the tone pot on the neck pickup to get that "woman tone" thing going on that people talk about?

No, never. Honestly I hate the woman tone. It's a bad tone that had a really good marketing team.

No disrespect to anyone who likes it of course :D. It's just not for me.
 
Yes, it's truly an underrated thing. In the studio lots of mixers (include me) stack more than one EQ because different EQs operate at different frequencies, and you can get pretty surgical tailoring the sound using more than one. So we might use an EQ on a channel, but another EQ on a bus, and perhaps a third EQ on the output bus. Then in mastering, it's pretty unusual not to use a separate EQ there. So one instrument can be EQ'd in several processing steps.

There are also EQs like the classic Pultecs that have separate boost and cut controls that operate on slightly different frequencies where you can both boost a frequency, and cut another frequency in the same tone range, to shape your tone (kind of like what I described with the interaction of the guitar and amp tone controls.

Incidentally, what happens in recording and mixing partially explains why it's often difficult to 'nail' the sound of something you hear on a record: It's because there are so many steps in processing, between the mic's own frequency curve, EQ, Compression, and any other effects that might get thrown into the mix.

:eek:

Interesting. Slightly offtopic, reminds me there's a guy on YouTube called Juca Nery. I believe he is also a sound engineer. He makes amazing 'patches' for the Boss Katana MK2. Like for example a collection where he tries to emulate famous boutique amps. As far as I understand it he mainly uses many different EQ's in the amp's software. And effects/boosters ofcourse.

What you said that 'even' room acoustics play a role. I always thought room acoustics is one of the most imporant factors of sound. Like people who think their hifi speakers suck don't realise that maybe the placement and the room itself just sucks.
 
That's very interesting, thanks. The subject is a bit underrated imo. There are so many guides/YouTube video's about amps, pickups and how to dial amps. But very few guides for example about how you can get good sounds out of an amp with specific guitar tone knob settings.
The tone and guitar response also can change with the room/stage. For most people that’s no biggie, but if you are a feedback/harmonics freak, like me, this is a huge deal from one venue to another. The guitar tone control can help shape things on the fly. Here’s an example:


At 1:50 I start fighting harmonic cancellation that is killing sustain. At 2:24 I give up tweaking tone and angle to the monitor and turn up the gain. Being an outdoor gig, the FOH doesn’t feed back to me to help with resonating the guitar…it’s all monitors.
 
I rarely adjust the tone pot on my PRS guitars. The range of choices of pickup settings and combinations allows me to get whatever tone I want without having to adjust the tone pot in most cases. When using other guitars I resort to adjusting the tone pot to achieve a desired tone more often.
 
What you said that 'even' room acoustics play a role. I always thought room acoustics is one of the most imporant factors of sound. Like people who think their hifi speakers suck don't realise that maybe the placement and the room itself just sucks.

right on!
 
I'm constantly making small tone-knob adjustments by ear, but also, sometimes you've just got to run something with a vintage marshall character wide open, with your tone knob rolled all the way off - some good old Cream woman tone.
 
I typically ride the bridge around 7-8, but sometimes go down to 5. Will play at 10 on some dirty patches. Neck pickup nearly always on 10 as I tend to use bridge most of the time. I have 59/09, 57/08, 58/15LT and 53/10 pickups. I do the same with my Huber as well.
 
I'm always tweaking the tone pot. The notes and sound need to keep moving. I love the full mud neck pickup through a Boss HM2 and a Slow Phaser. Trippy!
 
What about the volume knob? I heard quite a few people who keep the volume at 7 for the 85/15 because higher than that 'the output is off the charts'.
 
Back
Top