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Intersting video on how to get a jazz guitar tone:
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05-06-2019 05:02 PM
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It's good advice I think in general with a humbucker, and I'm pretty sure most of us learn eventually through it through trial and error.
I'm less sure whether it applies with non-humbuckers though. I recently swapped out the humbucker in my laminate jazzbox with a Lollar HB-sized CC pickup - still early days but so far it seems that rolling off the volume a bit with the CC pickup is a good thing. I note Tim Lerch has recommended this in some of his videos featuring CC pickups.
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Tough to generalize. I think Coolvinny is right. For alot of HB equipped hollowbody guitars, that advice could work. On the P-90 or P-90 type pickup guitars I mostly use for jazz practice, that's not always the best approach. Completely depends on the specific guitar and pickup. On my Silvertone 1427 with P13 pickups, I never roll off tone on either p/u. They're pretty dark sounding at anything less than full volume.
Whereas on the Guild X50 with the Franz p/u, the sweet spot (to my ears) is tone rolled down to between 2 or 3. It's a bright p/u, but can get quite fat-sounding with enough tone rolled off. With the regular P90s on my Epi Casino, tone full up works, but it also sounds good with just a bit of tone rolled off.
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Here's my take on how to get a great jazz tone.
1. First, great jazz has been played with a lot of different sorts of tone.
2. Consider what tone makes your style of play sound best. Major factors are warmth, sustain, woodiness (or lack thereof), smoothness/roundness of upper register, clarity of chords etc.
3. Identify the guitar and amp which allows you to get your sound. This is trial and error. There are a handful of guitar types worth playing and more choices on amps. I think it's really hard to tell anything in the store, but you can buy with a return privilege.
Same with pick, strings and FX.
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Metheny, Hall, Bickert... they all roll the tone down on the guitar.
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Read what he says in the comments section when someone mentions Metheny rolling down the tone on his guitar.
Originally Posted by fep
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Yes! I can't stand it when people film like this. Originally Posted by lawson-stone
Anyways, bringing this on topic. I've seen this video before, and he does make some good points. You don't need to just roll off your tone knob and BAM! "Jazz Tone". Work with the amp first and use it's tone controls first and then fine tune with your guitar.
He also talks about your sound, not in front your amp, but 25-50ft out. Not that I would need to be worried about that playing to nobody, but he does make a good point there.
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A trick I read about and intend to use eventually.
Set up with a looper. Record something, let the looper play it back while you roam the FOH checking your sound.
Of course, when you do this, the audience probably hasn't arrived yet and nobody else is playing. So, there's a good chance the results will be misleading. Basically, there's no substitute for a sound guy.
I did a wedding gig a while back. Leader is singing bassist. He hired guitar and drums. For the 4th guy allowed by the budget, he hired a soundman. That's a Pro move. As it turned out, the audience was sparse in the first set and the place was packed to the point where you couldn't move for the second set. Sound guy made the adjustments.Last edited by rpjazzguitar; 05-07-2019 at 03:58 PM.
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Jazz sound is a personal thing...
One like dark-fat another like more trebble...
If you feel comfortable with it is OK.
I have a lot of Jim Hall Cds-he sound a little bit different on these recordings and I am sure he experiment with Tone knob.
my 2 cents...
Best
Kris
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I've seen Pat Metheny twice, and I found his tone to be painfully dull on both occasions. While I loved his playing, I would have enjoyed the performances more if his sound had been more detailed. Originally Posted by sgcim
Read what he says in the comments section when someone mentions Metheny rolling down the tone on his guitar.
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well myself I will use bouth pickups and turn the volume down on the bridge so the sound of the bridge will be less noticeable in the mix lets say neck at 9 and bridge at 7 it gives me more highs then with just the neck pickup.
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Sorry I don't doubt he is a good player but this video is wishy washy at best with some questionable information.
Note he is not saying don't turn down the treble. He is saying turn it down on your amp, not on your guitar. Because tone knobs on the guitar aren't like treble or bass controls, but they are tone knobs. What????
First of all, treble and bass on the amp are also tone knobs. Most amps have passive pots that cut these frequencies just like the ones in your guitars. So the tone knob on the guitar vs treble knob on the amp aren't different category things. Even when he is saying it, it doesn't seem like he has a clear idea what they really mean.
As to why he favors amp vs guitar tone knobs. It seems like he is implying that cutting down treble on the guitar will cut the magic guitar juices coming from the pickups, while cutting down treble on the amp still preserves them. He gives no reasoning for this unusual point.
Then he goes on to demonstrate his point by rolling the treble ALL the way off and says, look that doesn't sound that good. That's a bit of a strawman argument. If he rolled the treble all the way down in his amp, that wouldn't have been ideal either. That's an extreme setting that would have limited applications.
I get that his point is to say that keep the clarity of your guitar, don't go for that muddy tone some players seem to automatically do. But the whole point of controlling the treble on the amp, not on the guitar is a sag-way. He implies that he also cuts the treble on the amp to get his sound (as opposed to guitar), yet he never shows his amp settings.Last edited by Tal_175; 05-09-2019 at 05:41 PM.
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If you read his comments below, when people ask him about his amp settings, he said that it would be meaningless to tell you what his amp settings are, because it varies from room to room. Originally Posted by Tal_175
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I agree of course it does depend on the room. So as the tone setting of the guitar. He did demonstrate the difference between turning down the tone on the guitar all the way down and turning it up. My point is the same principle applies to the amp's treble control. Originally Posted by sgcim
That's the part that I find wishy washy. He seems to make two points. One is to keep guitars volume and tone all the way up and use only the amps controls to adjust volume and cut treble. Why??
Second, also don't cut treble too much. What is too much for jazz tone? Well, OK he did establish that all the way down is probably too much. But again that's a bit of a strawman argument. I mean he is not saying not to cut any treble at all. He seems to acknowledge that it's done to get good tone. If you go out of you way to make an 11 minute video about getting great jazz tone basically to discuss how much treble to cut, some demonstration of how he gets what he considers to be a great jazz tone in the context of the videos recording seems to have been useful. Otherwise I don't know what one is expected to get out of spending 11 minutes to watch a video about getting a great jazz tone.
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IME rolling off the tone control on the guitar gives a different sound than rolling off the treble on the amp. I prefer the tone on the guitar full up, to pass as many frequencies as possible to the amp, and then adjust the amp controls to taste. Just rolling off the guitar tone control yields mud.
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I also prefer to play with the controls all the way up, but on occasion -- depending on the guitar/amp/room -- I'll roll the tone on the guitar down to maybe 7 or 8. Same with volume. Doing so yields a different sound than only using the amp controls. Or, if the amp has no controls!
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I like to use an EQ pedal, but generally I shove both bass and treble on the Princeton down to zero and adjust to the room (to get a flat EQ curve), fine tune tone from the guitar if necessary, but basically full open.
Probably should have bought a different amp. :-)
I feel if a player has trouble making a good tone on a flat setting they have some work to do on the picking hand. That's my basis for teaching this stuff anyway. Get a good, fat, acoustic tone and work from there.
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I find that the tone controls on guitars work very nicely up until about mid way point. After that they start getting too muffled. Cutting volume also reduces trebles. So volume and tone both around 6-8, tames trebles quite well on the fly.
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The treble cut from the volume depends on the wiring. The way Benedetto does it, there is no change in tone from full open to full off, that I can hear. On a Gibson, though, there is a noticeable change in tone as the volume is reduced. That's why I rewire any guitar I get that has Gibson style wiring.
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IME most experienced players do it this way around. Sometimes quite aggressive EQ'ing from the amp side. Originally Posted by sgosnell
OTOH I still feel I'm working out live sound (!) - I'm getting closer. EQ pedal is a great asset.... Lots of factors...
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He claims that cranking up the guitar's volume and tone results in maximum output from the pickup(s). Originally Posted by Tal_175
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The tone control on the guitar adds capacitance. Treble cut cap.
I think that a lot of amps do the same thing. If you drew the circuit diagram it would be the same thing.
But, the capacitance value also matters -- and here is where my understanding is murky. If the cap in the guitar is not the same value as the cap in the amp (and/or the pot is a different value), would that affect the frequency response?
That is, would you be able to get the same sound from rolling off either tone control or would there be an inherent difference?
If it's different, then you'd have to try it every which way and see what you liked best.
Which would be my advice on getting a great tone. Start with an idea of what you want and twiddle knobs until you get the closest.
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Yeah, passive tone and volume controls, in my understanding, all work with the same principle. Although different pot and cap values change the sweep and amount of their effect. But that's true between different amps as well. Most amps also have interactive tone knobs.
There is one difference between tone and volume knobs on the guitar vs the amp though. I'm not a 100% sure but I think tone and volume controls on the guitar somehow feedback to the pickups and effect how pickups behave. Amp's controls of course do not affect the pickups. Controls on the guitar change the shape and location of the resonant frequency of the pickup. Resonant frequency of a pickup depends on various factors, how hot it's wired, single coil vs humbucker, magnets etc. In fact two same model pickups probably would have slightly different resonant peaks. Tone and volume controls allow you to play with that which is a good thing, I think.
So volume and tone all the way up doesn't mean your getting most "tone" out of the guitar. You are getting one particular pickup characteristic. That's only one descrete point in the continues space of possible pickup characteristics. Not a universal constant of good tone. Volume and tone knobs give you a bit wider range of possibilities around your particular pickup's place in that space. You can explore places that are in-between a hot and vintage wired pickup for example.
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In my very limited experience trying to get jazz tones, I would agree, unless you're working with a single coil neck pickup. In that case rolling a bit off with the guitar tone control yields pleasing results, IMO. But obviously the amp itself still has the most powerful tone shaping options. Originally Posted by sgosnell
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I'm playing with an EQ pedal right now. Any tips? So far I seem to be getting the most pleasing sounds by emphasizing the midrange and cutting the lows and highs, so the graphic EQ looks like a symmetrical hill. Originally Posted by christianm77
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