Help! Tone: Getting strings 5 & 6 to have more presence?

Gear & Tools Talk
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I’m in Grade 2 and am doing the finger style module (Module 11). I would be very grateful for any advice about tone and guitar / amp settings:

Here’s the issue:

I have 2 Squier teles, one in my home in Switzerland and the other at my house in France. I’m mostly in Switzerland.

In France, my affinity tele is modded with better pots and Tonerider Alnico II blues pickups. I play it through a Vox VT50 (Valvetronic) hybrid valve/transistor amp with a 12" speaker. This combination has very a warm tone with the clean amp models I use and with plenty of deep but well defined bass.

My other tele is a Classic Vibe 60’s. I play it through an Orange crush 35rt, but I have to add, at pretty low volumes as I live in an apartment. The Orange crush has a 10" speaker. So by default its doesn’t have so much bass and its a much brighter sound. I always play it on the clean channel.

I started doing finger style (happy birthday - challenging!) but also I’m doing REM Everybody Hurts and Lewis Capaldi Someone you loved. With my affinity tele, the bass notes on the 5th and 6th strings really sound deep and nice. On my classic vibe, when I play the bass notes on the 5th and 6th strings then play notes on strings 1, 2 and 3, the treble notes are so loud that the bass just gets drowned out and you can’t really hear it. Its not that I’m plucking those strings harder.

So my question is:

What should I do so that the bass notes don’t get drowned out by the treble with my classic vibe? Is it a question of changing pickup height, or the bass, middle and treble on the amp? There are so many different variables that I don’t know what to try but I would like to have a more balanced sound, especially as I am really enjoying finger style and like to hear those bass notes in the background while plucking the 1st, 2nd and 3rd strings. If I change settings on the amp to get better defined bass, what is the way to do this? At first I assumed adding more bass, but then I was thinking perhaps I need to lower the treble and a bit of the middle?

I should mention that the pickups on both guitars are set very low and are level (what I mean is that I have not positioned them so that one end of the pickup is nearer the strings than at the other end).

Not sure that I posted in the right place but any advice would be very welcome.

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Hello,

I think the easiest way to fix the problem would be to play the two guitars through the same amp with the same settings and compare those tones. I don’t know if you can manage that given the distance between the two locations.

Do you use the same type of strings on both guitars? Also, the pickups and the pickup height can make a difference. I suggest you to take notes on the tweaks you make so that it will be easier to undo the changes.

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I don’t know your amps, but I change tones often.
I don’t know your guitars either but something I note about listening to telecasters is, they sound bright (trebley) to me just generally speaking.
Try the ft. pick only (assuming ya got bridge and neck pickups) to get lower notes to ring out more. Bridge pick up is usually brighter, neck pick up more full sounding, usually.
Turn the tone down on the guitar.
Turn the Bass up on the amp.
Turn the treble down on the amp.
Play the strings forwards more towards the center of the strings. Playing the strings closer to the bridge is usually brighter.
Just twist some knobs and see what happens, you can always put them back like the knobs were to start with assuming you note how setting are prior to tweaking the knobs.

Could just be the amp I suppose. Some amps are just naturally bright (trebley) sounding. I had a peavy like that. Got so I liked it’s tone so little I gave the amp away.
Got a Fender Princeton Reverb in it’s place. With a 10’’ speaker. That amps a shade bright too (for me, generally). To take some of the brightness out of it I run the tones at 4 for treble, 5 for bass and maybe turn the guitar tone down from 10 to 7ish.
Also, the louder that prri is, the less bass it needs to the point where it’s getting pretty loud, I’ll start turning the bass down even. My base setting for that amp are treble @ 5, bass @ 5.

Many ways to change the tones.
Even that peavey I gave away I finally figured out that treble turned way down and bass way up helped get more bass out of it. While it got more bass, I still just thought that amp sucked and was not enjoyable to play since I just couldn’t get the tones out of it I wanted. Hence giving it away. Disclaimer, I gave it to my boy who don’t play at all and don’t care about playing. Point is, I can still go play it if I have the urge, which I haven’t.

Play around with them tone knobs, amp and guitar. Ya really can’t go wrong twiddling them. No harm done.

Jozsef has a good idea too. Playing both guitars through one amp, see if it’s the guitar or the amp. I’m guessing the amp as the amp sets the tone from what I read.
For me and that peavey, it didn’t matter what guitar I played through it, the tone was always to trebley. Playing the sames guitars now that I played through the peavey. It ain’t my guitars, it was the amp as the same guitars sound just dandy through the amps I use now. And one of them is a peavey too, a red stripe bandit.
fwiw, the peavey that I didn’t like was a audition 20 w/8’’ speaker. It was just not the amp for me.

Good luck and imho, twiddle some knobs and see if ya can get the tones your looking for. If ya can’t, get a different amp… :wink: GAS ya know :slight_smile:

As for the pickup height. Them are usually adjustable too. I don’t know much about the heights, but I’m aware that it does make a difference. I think there is a point of pickup height to close to the strings or to far away too. Can’t hurt to adj them too. imho, measure the heights low E and high E though before tweaking them. That way ya can put them back to original height ya started with if the adjustments don’t work out. Ya might see if there’s a specification on pickup height for your guitar. I only got one guitar new. It came with pickup heights that were suggested for best tones from the OEM. Maybe that could be a starting point if ya can find them specs for your guitars.

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Also, a short recording of the problematic parts could make it easier for us to give you more appropriate advice.

If you play fingerstyle on an electric guitar, don’t turn the volume too high on the guitar as it might add unwanted distortion to your tone making it sound murky and lose the details.

5

In a neutral context,not comparing with other sounds or amps but just checking one guitar, one amp and your ears, you can find that a guitar seems to be on the bassy or trebly end.

If it is noticeable across strings and you find that you lack ‘power’ in one side, chances are you need to lower or raise one side of the pickup.

Lukily, that is an easy job that just needs a small screwdriver.

Raise the side that lacks power OR lower the part that is, in comparison, too powerful.
distance to the strings makes a difference but it will also change the character.

Try raising it a bit on the side that is not powerful enough if you think the other side has a good (but not too powerful) signal.

Raising it up to the max doesn’t mean it will be the “best” tone.

The screw is located there:

image
image800×800 88.5 KB

The spring wants to push the pickup down, the screw keeps its as high as you want. That’s why you can have the impression you can “bounce” the pickup a bit
image

Want to know more?

A lot of good info on the seymour duncan site that I’ll link:
Seymour Duncan Pickup Height | Seymour Duncan

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Thanks so much to al of you for the replies.

Unfortunately, the two guitars are 430km apart so it’s not that easy to compare the two of them with one amp, although I can do that over the Xmas break if I take my classic vibe tele with me to France.

I am going to try and raise the pickups a little bit so they are a bit nearer to the 5th and 6th strings. At the moment, they are quite low, but the sound from the 1st to 4th strings is quite present already at that height.

But as @HappyCat suggested, my Orange amp is, I think, quite bright sounding amp.

I’ll post back what happens when I change the pickup height.

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Several of you had suggestions about tone and the fact that the 5th and 6th strings don’t sound very present in my setup with my classic vibe telecaster and the Orange Crush 35 RT compared to my other setup in France.

So I’m reporting back as I think the main problem is simply because of the volume at which I play my 2 rigs. In France, I have a house and my nearest neighbour is about 30 metres away and doesn’t care how much noise I make (he’s a metal guitarist after all). So I have the amp turned up to a decent level for practice. Here in Switzerland, I live in an apartment and I keep my Orange crush on really low volumes so I don’t torture the neighbours.

Tonight I cranked the Orange Crush up some more and then the 5th and 6th strings sounded nice, there was more balance and overall the tone was much much better. I had read several people saying that you have to crank up the Orange crush a bit to get a good tone and that then it’s too loud for playing in an apartment. I think it’s true. It sounds really great but at that level I won’t be very popular with the neighbours. :cry:

So ultimately I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my setup, just the volume I’m able to play in the two different places I live.

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That’s some good news you found out what causes the problem. Maybe you could take the Orange to France where noise is less of an issue and the Vox to Switzerland?

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Yes, then I can annoy my neighbours with the sound of my Vox instead :grin:

Seriously though,
I think I’ll just have to live with it as the Vox is more bulky and I have a lot less space in my apartment. The Orange is a more reasonable size.

I’ve really only noticed this when I started learning fingerpicking in Module 11. When strumming I notice this issue a lot less.