I used to do this to get close to the sound Clapton uses in Sunshine of Your Love. After reading what WordMan had to say about that classic Clapton tone, I began experimenting with rolling off the tone to something less than zero. On my Strat Plus and my ES-335 (Epiphone), there is a spot below the halfway point and above zero that is the ideal spot, still very smooth but without the muddiness that I get at zero.
Funny, that’s the song I’ve been playing with to try these new settings. That and Kashmir.
The tone control has been very useful to me on two of my three guitars: The XV-585 with the P-90 in the neck really responds to it, Clapton-style.
And the Subhuman will SHATTER the world unless I use it. Good lord those pickups are hot. But educational. And if I’m not set up on a overdriven amp, it’s a beautiful hot blues sound.
Sure, I adjust my tone knob whenever I accidentally knock it back from 10 while doing a half-Townshend or something. 
Seriously, I play a Rickenbacker 330 and the tone knob doesn’t seem to do much, anyway, especially since I’ve scarcely evolved past buzzsaw rock.
Maybe someday I’ll start trying to play other stuff and work on it (that’s kind of like saying “someday, I’m going to read all that classic literature I’ve been neglecting”)
Oh yeah, I just tried that. Very nice! I’m going to have blisters for a week.
It’s funny, with the gain on 10 and the tone on 0, all of the pickups sound the same.
One of my favorite collaborators who plays guitar has been known to, in the absence of his usual rack of effects, roll tone and/or volume controls to simulate tremolo – it surprised me when we were playing some Western Swing and he was just plugged into the FOH PA. I asked during a break what that was, and he told me – pretty cool as a work-around with no proper effects.
Not relevant but I EQ the hell out of my keys when running through a mixer – and I remember as a kid (who idolized Clapton) his “woman tone” by rolling off the high ends. I don’t like too much piercing high end on acoustic piano, and it’s a must for Hammond – given the capabilities of a Leslie speaker, and it’s propensity for dropping highs and giving a slight boost to the mid (don’t remember the frequencies). But I never mess with my levels while live – that’s a real bonus for expression for a guitar player, IMO.
Not exactly: it tells you that your rig cannot handle those extremes and reflect the differences that are there. Sorry - no intent to slam your gear; just making it clear that there are differences, but a person has to have the type of rig designed to pick up (get it? :rolleyes:) those differences…
You’re definitely not slamming my gear. I’m well aware that I bought the cheapest amp they had in the store.
It was just an observation of what happened when I pushed it to the limit.
Cool - thanks. And yeah, few amps are really designed to channel stompboxes when you dial the controls past 11…
Whups, wrong thread.
I’ve got a Hagstrom Deluxe-F, with dual-humbuckers, and a coil tap switch. With the coil tap off, and the bridge pickup selected, the tone goes from somewhat bright to muddy very quickly with no in-between, so I leave it at 10 - with the neck pickup, the tone does practically nothing. But with the coil tap on, the tone can get quite varied, which is fun - but the overall levels are much lower, which doesn’t give the amp much to work with (I have a sh*tty Crate amp, and a Zoom modeler, so I need all the signal I can get).
I’m thinking I need to get some better caps and pots, which might make it sing a bet better.
Just got a new Tele copy (details) and this is my first dual pick-up guitar… there appear to be 5 positions on the rocker-switch, which has me confused… any pointers?
The mfgr most likely used a Strat-style switch and either only wired three positions, or wired some of the positions in series (so the first and second positions both enable the bridge, or the fourth and fifth enable the neck, etc.). The only time I’ve ever seen a 5-way switch used legitimately on a tele was on a guitar with coil-tapped stacked humbuckers, and I doubt yours would have such a setup at that price.
What do the second and fourth positions do when you plug it in?
Actually, two telecaster-oids from Guitarfetish have neck-humbuckers. The ‘Keef’ model, and the Telecaster-on-a-Jazzmaster-body that I’m currently trying very hard not to break down and buy. Say what you want, but they’re not ashamed to toss in their own wrinkles on a design.
I think I am conversing in two threads, but I played the guitar for the second time, and it is a 3-position switch… I think it grabbed a bit on first-pass in what would have been 4th position, but it now moves freely from 1-2-3.
[Fill in excuse for being so late to this thread here]
My first gigging setup was a Tele into a 100W head and my only effect/stomp box was an analogue delay. Nothing in the way of gain/overdrive/distortion at all. My approach was along the lines of every thing on the amp on 10 and control it from the guitar*. This works with a Tele because as you roll off the volume the tone gets brighter** giving you options that you don’t have with a Gibson style tone setup. That is you can stick with the toppier sound or tame it with the tone control, you’re not just stuck with a more muffled sound. I think WordMan has pointed out elsewhere the way to get a thick tone out of a Tele is to back off a bit on the tone control, a Tele bridge pickup puts out a lot of mids but flat out it puts out even more top. Which in a rock context comes over as thin. I used to mark ‘pre-set’ positions for both volume and tone by installing the control knobs so that the grub screw was visible (Tele knobs don’t have numbers) so I could line it up to point straight up or in line with the switch etc. The settings were pretty sensitive, you really need to get to know your guitar to play that way. Back then the Tele was my only electric so I put in a lot of time on it***.
More recently I played a Fender Performer (see the great ongoing… thread) which has a tone control that does more than just cut top. It has a centre notch which is position zero/neutral. From there you can do the standard muffling but also boost top. So yes that tone control got used but not for the fine tuning sort of thing I did with the Tele.
Phew, back to work.
*****that’s how I remember it but that can’t be quite right, running a 100W Laney head full out would’ve caused earthquakes.
******bypass capacitor, google it 
*******enough to need a re-fret.
All good **Small Clanger **- and yeah, you must be mis-remembering about having the Laney on 10 because you can still hear and are still fertile 
I can just envision how my arm hair would move in front of a 100W Laney on 10.
But great point about Tele knobs - a time-honored ritual for a true Tele players is the Adjusting of the Knobs™ when you are first setting up the guitar for your use. I want the knob’s set screw - the only visual sign you have of the knob’s position - to be visible throughout the part of the knob’s sweep I use the most. So on the Volume knob, I dial up the pot all the way to 10 and then position the screw at about 4 o’clock - that way, as I dial it down counter-clockwise, having the volume on about 7 puts the screw at noon, easy to see as I look down on it. So for the real clean tone, I just dial it down until I can’t see it, and if I need it at about 8 for cruncy rock rhythm work, it is easy to see, since I am staring right down at it. With the Tone knob, I will position the screw at more like 6 o’clock, since I regularly want the Tone control from about 8 to about 4 (since I don’t play country, I almost never have the Tone on 10, and will often leave it on 4 for a string of similar-sounding songs)…
By the way, a Tele’s knurled metal knobs are one of it’s coolest features - they are heavier vs. the normal radio-dial knobs you see on other guitars and they feel great in your fingers. So even though they don’t have the easy to read numbers, I wouldn’t change 'em for the world, and actually kinda dig learning how to “read the set screw” to get my tone dialed in right…
Update: follow this linkto an article on PremierGuitar’s website, where Jol Dantzig - the founder of Hamer Guitars and a PG columnist - addresses this issue and the power of learning to use your tone control…