Hi, I’m John McClennan and I’m here today
with Guitar Control and we’re going to talk about
dialing-in a good tone. I think that it’s often an
overlooked step, especially with beginners, as far
as just when you plug into your amp and start to play.
We’ll talk about some basic knob controls here.
Most amps are going to come with a treble, a middle
and a bass knob. If we look at my amp here, I’ve got
the bass, I’ve got the middle and I’ve got the treble.
And it’s important to balance-out your sound and certain
characteristics are going to be used for certain styles
of music. For instance, if I want a jazz tone, I might
give myself a little bit more bass and then maybe on my
guitar, roll-down the tone a little bit, and then I’m
going to get a sound like this.
Now, if I — imagine you had just plugged-in your guitar
and you had like all the bass up and the treble rolled-back
and it just wasn’t dialed-in yet. You start playing your
chords, and like, listen to this. It sounds like someone put
a pillow over my amp, or I’m like, do I have a cold? So let’s
balance it back out.
A nice, good place to start might be just to level-out; put
everything even and then you go from there. If I want a little
bit more treble, maybe that’s going to give me more of like a
country sound. Throw it in the back pickup this time and I’ve
got this kind of sound. Nice, bright sound, maybe for the pedal
steel stuff.
Again, the bass controls the low end frequencies, the middle is
the middle, the mid frequencies, and the treble is going to be
right on the tippy top, the high end. And so be sure to take the
time and play around with it.
One of the things when I first started, my ear, and I didn’t know
how things worked, and so I just turn it all the way. Just go, oh,
that’s what that does. So that’s a good place to start. And be sure
to take a little extra time and just dial-in a good tone.
So that’s it for this lesson and be sure to click the links below
and we’ll see you in the next video.
