Amp up high, guitar down low?

EricTheWeary

For some reason I was thinking about a guy I used to know who was a really good blues-rock guitarist (he had played with John Mayall amongst others) and he used to have his amp (some kind of Vox head he had or whatever was to hand) wacked up stupidly loud but then his guitar volume knobs (he used Guilds with buckers IIRC) always down at about 5. I first twigged to this when he borrowed my stuff for a jam and then set it up like that. I played my strat through my little Mustang with the guitar on about 4 earlier today with the amp turned up fairly loud and it sounded really good, if maybe lacking bite on the top strings.
Anybody here routinely play like this? That is with the guitar on about 5, never turning up anywhere near 10.

Barney

iff i record using the amp modeller i always have the vol about 4 or 5 when im using the gain sounds on clean it dosnt really matter....iv never really thought of doing this through the amp apart from when i need different volumes or to clean the sound up a bit but i will now....

p90fool

Yep, I always run my amps like that, but I use 50s wiring to keep the sound lively at lower settings.

EricTheWeary

p90fool said:

Yep, I always run my amps like that, but I use 50s wiring to keep the sound lively at lower settings.

Yes,lively is a good word, seems a good way to get more dynamic cleanish tones. I suspect fine with single coils but not with all bucker set ups. I suppose extraneous noise and the chance of accidentally wacking everything up to 10 being the downsides. 

NervousJohn

Mostly my guitar is set with the volume around 5 and the amp as high as is needed. I mostly use a cleanish tone, and as others have said it also gives more dynamic range and you can change your sound with how hard you pick. It also works well into a joyo ultimate drive - its set quite low and can go from clean to quite dirty all from pick attack.

ESchap

p90fool said:

Yep, I always run my amps like that, but I use 50s wiring to keep the sound lively at lower settings.

+1

Cirrus

I like to run my amp up high, and my guitar up high. )

I guess it just depends on your setup. If your amp/ effects setup has loads of clean headroom I don't think it makes a big difference. On the other hand, when the setup is tending towards crunch a little backing the guitar volume off is a good way of leaving yourself some headroom, which gives you a bit more room to be punchy and dynamic.

Roland

5 is my default volume setting.  I've got it marked with tape on the volume knob so that I can see it in half light, and feel it in the dark.  When I use Tele style knobs I put the grub screw in the 5 position for the same purpose.  

For songs where the guitar part is more prominent I play at about 7.  This mean that moving up to 10 still gives enough volume for a cleanish solo without kicking in a drive pedal or changing amp channel.

Van_Hayden

Didn't know there was another way to get a vintage style amp to work...

EricTheWeary

Van_Hayden said:

Didn't know there was another way to get a vintage style amp to work...

I don't know if this is just vintage style amps, the chap I was thinking of ( I really can't remember his name) would do the same through my valvestate. And this isn't turning down to clean the sound up this is never really getting up to 10 on the guitar. I think I remember Jeff Beck saying he never turns the volume knob on his strat up to 10 to take some of the harshness out of the tone and that seems right to me.

ICBM

And Neil Young thinks that turning down below full kills the tone... so much so that Old Black has a switch to bypass the controls completely.

I don't think there's a right answer, it depends on the amp, the guitar (although this is usually fixable with wiring tweaks if it loses too much when you roll it off), and what you're trying to do with it.

I remember that when I played in my originals band I always used the guitar full up and switched sounds using pedals and the amp channels - anything below full on the guitar sounded dull and lifeless. Yet when I did a stand-in job as a lead guitarist in a wedding band - at the same time, using the same guitar - I automatically used the guitar volume control all the time, and ran the amp up loud on one channel only using one pedal that was on all the time except for strict cleans. I didn't even think about it, I just did it because it sounded better, and it was only after the first gig that I actually thought how odd it was for me to do that.

Van_Hayden

Well once you get a lot of pedals, and some modern high gain amps, I sometimes hit the treble loss problem. For warmer blues and jazz tones use the amp on a fairly neutral setting, not too bright not to dull and use the guitars volume to tweak the tone, and then if its not warm enough take a bit of tone off. I heard that the volume knob on van halens frankenstrat was labeled tone...he got that right!

Lexie1

Certainly when using products that originated in Meltham, I have always used them as you describe and controlled everything from the guitar's volume pot Hayden.

Van_Hayden

@lexie1 you're not wrong there.

The same is true of many older designs, less voltage in the front gives the amp a bit more headroom before the preamp goes into clip. Depends on the tone you're going for though - if you're wanting to push the amp for more distortion run it on 10 and hit it with a boost.

My first post was a bit tongue in cheek, the main point was don't forget to use your vol and tone controls....

ICBM

It does help to have proper controls on the guitar though - a lot don't, the volume control badly sucks tone as soon as it's anywhere below full, and the tone control is a mud switch that operates at about 2 on the knob. I suspect it's a bit of a vicious circle - players don't use the controls because they don't work properly, so manufacturers don't see the need to fit good ones, so then they don't get used...

Decent quality pots with proper tapers are essential, 50s wiring helps as well, but the most flexible is the "amp-type" circuit where the tone control is both a conventional treble roll-off and a variable treble-pass on the volume pot. When the volume control is down a long way the tone control can then actually brighten the sound, if you want.

Van_Hayden

The taper on pots is important - as is the resistance. Gibson want stringing up for using300k pots on non custom shop guitars so they sound worse than the expensive versions.

I'm not all that convinced about 50s wiring. It sounds great but I've got so used to the vagaries of the modern way of doing things The old way doesn't do what I expect....

Aidanspaghetti

You mean the volume knob turns the other way??

ourmaninthenorth

Pretty much agree with the general consensus of amp up, control everything from the guitar. Just the way I learned how to do it.  b-(

Paul_C

I recall, in my youth, buying an old AC30 which, at bedroom volumes, was super clean, so I hit on the plan of turning it up full with the guitar volume all the way off and then gradually turning up the guitar to see if I could get any distortion.

Before I had managed to get it very far there was a huge buzz and a whole lot of blue "flame" came out of the vents on top - much to my surprise, followed by a shout from my Mum downstairs

It had to go back to the shop for repair, and I don't recall keeping it for much longer.

ICBM

Van_Hayden said:

The taper on pots is important - as is the resistance. Gibson want stringing up for using300k pots on non custom shop guitars so they sound worse than the expensive versions.

I'm not all that convinced about 50s wiring. It sounds great but I've got so used to the vagaries of the modern way of doing things The old way doesn't do what I expect....

I also think a little too much is made of it - particularly by people who don't seem to understand what it does, and think you either need to rewire the tone control, or that it changes the tone when the volume is up full (or both). The effect is fairly subtle anyway, I think. Useful, but not the be-all and end-all.

I also dispute the necessity of 'selected' pot values when people get all picky about using 550K +/- 1% or whatever it is. I did some direct-switiching experimentation with this and found that the minimum change for it to be audible was about -25% or +33% from the nominal value. 10% makes no detectable difference, which is why pots are normally supplied with 20% tolerance!

And of course caps make no difference at all unless you're talking about different values.

Agreed about the Gibson pots. They're just shit, and I don't understand the logic of using them unless as you suggest it's deliberate to increase the gap between the standard and CS ranges. The reason why people hear such a big difference when they put in expensive pot and cap kits is because the pots are 500K, with better tapers and sometimes the cap values are deliberately made smaller, eg .015uF instead of .022. That's not to say the kits are worthless or even bad value for money, but the "magic" is in the values not the types.

Van_Hayden

My general rule is 500k or above, below and the top starts to go. Although I could have got used to pots at the top end of the tolerance spectrum....

As for caps, slight difference between construction other than that I agree it's value changes that make a difference.

But booteek caps, most are Russian pio caps that are very nice, fill an amp up with a dozen as couplers and you'll hear a difference. One on a tone pot in a guitar you don't even turn I'm not so sure. Ive done blind tests with some very picky guitarists on this. Not sure they believed the results. I've got hundreds of PIO if any body wants any. I don't charge for dressing mine up in wax....