Tone Knob Starting Point

thegummy

Generally I leave my tone knobs on 10 and sometimes might turn them down if the sound is too bright or if I'm going for a specific sound.

In the John Mayer video for the Silver Sky I remember him talking about how his default is 5 and he adjusts it either brighter or warmer if necessary.

I'd thought most people do what I do and default to 10 and I'd also have guessed most also play with it at 10 most of the time.

Which do you default to? Or do any of you change it all the time, different numbers for different songs/parts?

Rabs

Here a good LP vid about knobs     I used to just keep them all on 10 but these days I like to have a good fiddle as you really can get a lot of varied sounds ..

richardhomer

What’s a tone knob?

SteveF

I used to leave everything on 10 but these days it tends to depend on the guitar and sound I’m after. I guess I default to around 7 on Strat neck tone knob and 5 on the bridge/middle (modded). On Les Pauls I default to around 8 on the neck and 10 on the bridge. I do adjust them though. 

Roland

I change my tone knob between songs, and sometimes during them. I like to have some brightness in reserve, so would never set the amp so that the guitar tone needs to be on 10 all of the time.

Default position depend on guitar: It’s 5 on my current gigging guitar, and 7 on the backup.

slacker

It varies depending on what guitar I play...

Les paul-both tone controls around 6 or 7, I had 50s wiring installed, so there,s a lot of useable range.

Gretsch-doesn't have a tone knob, its a three way switch, so I tend to leave it in the middle position. I can then use the switch to adjust sounds to be brighter or duller.

Strat-I used strats more than any other guitar over the years and always left the tone on full and never used the bridge pickup. My current one has the bridge wired to the tone pot. So default is full on but used to tame the bridge pickup.

Rickenbacker-the tone controls are in the wrong place so I never use them. However I leave the pickup selector on both and use the 5th knob as a tone control. I leave it in the middle and adjust where needed.

I do use the tone controls but not constantly like some players. It's more a slight adjustment to get a better or clearer or sometimes duller sound.

Edit I use very bright sounding amps.

midlifecrisis

i keep most of my guitars on 10 for tone except telecasters which i roll the tone back to about half to three quarters way. i learnt this  off the internet and i blindly follow it but it seems to work ok. most teles bridge pickups seem quite shrill and this tames it IMHO

Bridgehouse

richardhomer said:

What’s a tone knob?

Someone who doesn’t say timbre...

HAL9000

On my Strat I tend to have the middle pickup tone around the 7 position. The neck pickup tone tends to be around the 3 mark.

On the Tele the tone never strays far from 10.

On my Esquire'd Tele, the tone control is used extensively but the default is probably around 6 or 7.

Funkfingers

slacker said:

It varies, depending on what guitar I play. Les paul - both tone controls around 6 or 7, I had 50s wiring installed, so there's a lot of useable range.

^
Pretty much this. 

My reclusive Blues maniac friend rolls all four pots back a bit on his Gibson Les Paul then, adjusts them as and when he feels it necessary. Watch old B. B. King videos from when he still played standing up. You'll soon get the general idea. 



On my elderly single pickup Gibson Melody Maker, the default position for the tone control is five and a half. Through overdriven valve amplification, this makes the skinny Skylark single coil sound more like a P90. I only turn the tone control up to ten for clean sounds. As you can probably imagine, these are not the guitar's strongest suit.

ICBM

Generally 10, but it depends on the guitar - with Strats I often set them a bit lower. I don't generally fiddle with them to get different sounds, more just to get the overall tone right if the sound is too bright by itself and turning the treble down on the amp makes it sound too dull. It's not the same thing, because the tone control on the guitar is (obviously) pre-distortion, whereas the amp's are often post-distortion - Marshall-type amps especially.

grungebob

I never bothered with the tone knob on my guitars until I got a single pickup guitar. Now it’s become my main guitar I’m getting much more usable tones out of it than any other guitar just by micro adjusting the tone knob. 

I have just  taken delivery of a new guitar though that has been modded from a single pickup to a strat layout and they’ve done something with the tone knob that I really like. No idea what they’ve done and it only works on the bridge pickup but on 8 it sounds normal , roll it all off and this wonderful bass bloom without losing treble comes in and take it to 10 and it’s twang city. I really must pull the pick guard and see what they’ve done. 

tone1

I like a bit of treble in my old age.... Tone usually on 10, volume 7-8 

djspecialist

7 all round on my SG2000 (LP-like controls).  Lately I've been learning to fiddle with the knobs (and pickup selector) to find different shades, rather than relying on kicking a pedal on or off.

rossi

I set up at around 5 so I have plenty of lee way on tone .I play a lot of jazz  and blues .

NelsonP

I pretty much always have volume and tone on 10 on all my guitars. Feel like i should experiment more but its too easy to roll them back too much and i find adjusting on the fly tricky.

Maybe i need to get a single pickup guitar. That would force me to learn how to use the controls properly.

bbill335

Live, volume +tone on 7 most of the time . At home volumes the tone stays mostly up full 

Rabs

Gary Moore was a constant knob fiddler too

guitarfishbay

Most of mine aren’t connected 

thegummy

bbill335 said:

Live, volume +tone on 7 most of the time . At home volumes the tone stays mostly up full 

That's interesting. Is it because it's so much louder, the high frequencies are biting?

I borrowed a Tele from my bandmate (with a noload tone) and while I wasn't a fan of the top end at home, it didn't offend my ears the way it does when he plays it in the studio.

thegummy

Rabs said:

Gary Moore was a constant knob fiddler too

Really? I thought he was an alright guy