I hadn’t actually read the notes, but at about 18:30 on the video he says
If I’m doing a workshop and someone gets up to play, the first thing I do is volume on 10, tone on 10… just make sure that that’s a kind of good default setting … you definitely should learn to experiment with all of those things, but as a general setting that’s probably where you want to start…
I think that is what stuck in my head. But he also talks about reducing volume to clean up the sound, so obviously it is something that needs to be tweaked to suit.
Strangely I hadn’t read the notes but watched the video first but as @oztelemann says it’s in the video about the volume knob. As others have noted reducing the volume does give some flexibility.
What Pickups Does That Semi-Hollow Body In The Background Have?
And What Brand Is It?
And Were Do You Buy It In Colombia?
And How Would You Make A Yamaha Pacifica With A Boss Katana MK2 Sound Jazzy?
Did You Know I’m REALY Into Jazz?
Wow All My Questions Are Giving Me A Headache!
Pickups closer to the bridge are more “twangy”. Jazz is not typically twangy so use the pickup closest to the neck. Your neck pickup is a “single coil” pickup which typically sound brighter and more “bell” like. Jazz guitar tone is typically described as “thicker”. On your amp, turn the treble down to make the neck pickup sound less bell like and more jazzy.
So the starting point recipe is:
Amp settings:
-Type: “Clean”
-Treble at about 9 o’clock
-Reverb: at about 12 o’clock
-All other knobs at the midpoint (12 noon)
-Effects off, except for reverb.
Guitar:
-Neck pickup (switch all the way towards the neck)
-To keep things simple for now, max the guitar controls to 10.
I also have a Katana and my guitar has single coil pickups and this is what I use. However, pickups, even of the same type, have a wide range of sounds. Some say the pickup is responsible for 80 % of the guitar’s tone.
So start with the above recipe, play with the knobs, explore the extremes, and have some fun.
Also, picking closer to the bridge sounds more twangy, so pick closer to the neck pickup.
I see an analogy with wine tasting. At first (apart from the most obvious differences), they all seem to taste alike, or, if they are different, you can’t explain what the difference is. It is helpful to compare one with another BUT without a vocabulary to record your experience, it can be very difficult to (1) find your way back to what you like (or avoid the ones you hated), without some kind of record / road map; (2) it is difficult to communicate your experience to someone else, particularly a helpful vintner to ask “What else is there like this ?”.
There are lots of very subjective terms for guitar sounds bandied about e.g. “fat” versus “scratchy”, or “thin”, as used in this particular video. Some may mean more or less the same to most people, others less so.
I have been trying to put together a vocabulary of guitar sounds for years, for my own benefit and understanding, and am nowhere near satisfied. Does anyone know of a published attempt at this ?
N.B. Did you know it is said that most untrained wine drinkers, if blindfolded, are unable to tell the difference in taste between a red or a white wine ?
Personally, if someone described a guitar tone to me as “fat”, “thin”, “scratchy”, “brittle”, “jangly”, “tinny” or something like that, I could probably guess what they meant, but there would be room left for misunderstanding. “Fuzzy” or “overdriven” are slightly more apparent (to me).
I think remarks like “that tone has a lot of reverb on it”, “this tone is treble-heavy” or “there is too much gain on it” would be easier to understand as those terms (reverb, treble, gain) refer to actual parameters frequently seen and mentioned by musicians and are more closely related to the physicality of sound than adjectives like “fat”. There is more transparency to them.
Thank you for those observations, Jozsef. I am still not sure, for instance what “break-up” entails.
I have recently aquired a Valeton GP-200 multi-effects unit that I am finding to be a good balance between the completely analog programming of my old Boss ME050 (all knobs) and a GT-1 that I bought for its small footprint and battery-friendly portability (almost entirely digital, menu-driven programming). Once I have learned how the Valeton operates, I intend to play about with programming my own patches and finding out how the different parameters affect the sound. Not quite “which end of the vineyard ?” (in my original analogy) but more “which grape?” and “which part of the world?” !
Was that mentioned in the lesson video? (I haven’t seen it for a long time.)
I think with instruments, it is easier to “learn” the different tones of different types of pickups/guitars thanks to the abundance of film footage and interviews/books. It is not very difficult to get familiar with a Fender Strat-type sound or a Gibson Les Paul-type sound if you have visual aids like photos or concert footage where you can see the actual equipment used.
That said, I think the more subjective terms are more useful for an aesthetic description of tone where there is less requirement for exactness. For example, I’d describe the guitar tone in the solo in the song below as “honey sweet”, though I can’t be sure exactly why it reminds me of honey. Maybe because the wah-wah effect and the fast triplets give it more “liquidity”, but on the whole it still has some firm outlines… but that’s just me trying to rationalize.
Or the bass in this song, I’d say it has a “buttery” tone but most people probably would ask me what I mean exactly by it…
Thanks, Jozsef. The truth may be that I don’t focus enough on the differences but only hear similarities. For instance, in the Beginners’ Course Module 15, Lesson 7 “The Truth About Guitar Tone” at 11:00 on the video, I can’t distinguish the split humbucker from the single coil.The difference between his rhythm and lead set-ups on the Gibson SG, however is demonstrably obvious. I must try and “isolate” the sounds and concentrate on them. Cheers.
OK (re not drinking wine ), but would also apply to lots of other things that we might want to describe to friends, such as the difference in taste between different makes of “Coke”, here and abroad. We need vocabulary to do this and the closer that vocabulary matches someone else’s idea of what we are talking about, the more likely they are to understand us. But it’s not an exact science (heck, people don’t exactly agree on what the colour “blue” is !) and nearly always we have to use analogies “It is like … such-and-such”. Good Luck with your journey of exploration !
), but would also apply to lots of other things that we might want to describe to friends, such as the difference in taste between different makes of “Coke”, here and abroad. We need vocabulary to do this and the closer that vocabulary matches someone else’s idea of what we are talking about, the more likely they are to understand us. But it’s not an exact science (heck, people don’t exactly agree on what the colour “blue” is !) and nearly always we have to use analogies “It is like … such-and-such”. Good Luck with your journey of exploration !