Grateful Dead Music Forum

I typically run my tone controls wide open on my guitar as well, except (occasionally) the neck pickup, where I like to roll back the tone using overdrive.

That's a whole interesting discussion, how people use their tone controls.

The other amp I have (which is for sale) is a Groove Tubes Soul-o which also has a "presence" control on it. It has tone controls very similiar to the Boogies ones, that interact heavily with each other. Aspen Pittman (GT's founder) recommends setting the bass, mid and treble where you like it, and then using the presence control to tune the amp to the room, so to speak, brightening it or deadening it in response to the acoustics.

Over time in Playing Dead, since my amp is always miked, I've learned to just set it and forget it -- on the Twin, bright switch on, treble at 7, mids at 10, bass at 4 -- and let the soundman worry about how it sounds out in the room. You can drive yourself crazy trying to dial it in so it sounds "right" on stage and then listen to the audience tapes later and find out it sounded dull or way too bright in the room.

I do the same with the tone and volume controls.
The neck "Woman" tone is cool.
I like to use that tone a lot for spacey Other One jams.Especially when going from another pup during a solo.
I use a Blues Driver that sounds cool on the neck pup with the tone rolled back.Add the Oc -2 and I get a pseudo-Oboe-y sound.
I have a Pearly Gates in the bridge position and love all the different combos I can get.
Coil tap too.
Sometimes playing with the knobs is a cool way to get sounds.
I always felt Live Deads Dark Star was a good example of Jerry using different techniques to get cool sounds with out too many pedals.Maybe he had a wah and some Overdrive,but not much in the way of a huge rig.

strummin said:
With your settings I'd imagine your problem is one of:
- low signal strength somewhere
- worn preamp tubes esp v1
- tone suckage thru FX
- tone suckage thru cables
- tone suckage thru cable lenghts
- potentially low signal in FX loop

Sounds like the tubes and fx tone suckage might be the culprit.

High Peaks wrote:strummin said:
With your settings I'd imagine your problem is one of:
- low signal strength somewhere
- worn preamp tubes esp v1
- tone suckage thru FX
- tone suckage thru cables
- tone suckage thru cable lenghts
- potentially low signal in FX loop

Sounds like the tubes and fx tone suckage might be the culprit.

I forgot to mention that I just put all new tubes in.

Emoto wrote:BTW, I keep the guitar set with both vol knobs at max, and both tones at max/brightest.

well, then that might be your other part of your problem, imho. you've been going:
guitar:bright(maxed)
amp:dark(treb 2-3).

I get the best results and control going:
guitar:dark(rolled back, adjusted here and there around the sweet spot)
amp:bright(treb 8-10)

tigerstrat wrote:

Emoto wrote:BTW, I keep the guitar set with both vol knobs at max, and both tones at max/brightest.

well, then that might be your other part of your problem, imho. you've been going:
guitar:bright(maxed)
amp:dark(treb 2-3).

I get the best results and control going:
guitar:dark(rolled back, adjusted here and there around the sweet spot)
amp:bright(treb 8-10)

Well, I'll try backing off the tone controls and see. Buy you a beer if that does it.