The Volume Knob Experiment

Full recognition for this experiment goes to Rick Beato and Dave Onorato for their episode on one of Rick’s YouTube channels. I’m putting the link to it right here because it is eye opening. Click the video link to watch it. It’s ok, I will wait.

I honestly don’t know where my habit came from but it was interesting to learn, I am not alone in it. When I set up an amp, I have done it for years based on the setting of the volume knob of the guitar in question. For Strats, Teles and most other single coils, I would tend to roll the volume right up to ten. For P90s, I would go between eight and nine and for humbuckers, between seven and eight depending on how hot the pickups were and because I had learned a while back that humbuckers backed off from ten sounded like they add wider dynamic range.

Right or wrong, this is what I did, and I’ve talked to hundreds of other guitarists who tend to do the same thing, some of whom run the guitar at ten and never move the controls at all.

The outcome of this decision was that all of my amps, except those without a high end load box are turned right down. Sure I had experienced them set louder, but it was rare because with the guitar set that way, they were really too loud to play at home. Some were too loud for a larger venue, and in today’s world in clubs where you have to play quiet enough so people can hear their idiot smartphones, I really couldn’t enjoy what a really powerful amp can do. I think that the lowest output amp that I have is my Tone King Imperial Mark II and with the attenuator disabled, it is still incredibly loud. As it should be. I like tubes. I can hear a difference between solid state and tubes, but more importantly I can feel a difference. On the odd occasion I would reduce the load management on the UA OX that is permanently connected between the 100w Silver Jubilee head and the A cabinet. The sound is pure bliss, but has been mostly unusable in a practical sense, because of the shaking windows and the police cars.

At the same time, whenever I have bought low power tube amps, at the 1 watt, 10 watt or with apologizes to my friend Keith at Five Watt World, five watts, there was always something missing. Don’t get me wrong, I will take 5 watts of tube over 100 watts of solid state most any day, although there is something I still find magical about a Roland JC-120. A great amp. Loud too. Yes, I am well aware that the majority of the sound from a rig or combo comes from the output transformer and the speakers, but there is a player feel that I get with tubes, and mostly do not get from solid state. Perhaps I suffer from tube delusion.

The Experiment

I enjoy watching Rick and Dave as they are always informational, and I always learn something. Rick made the point that after decades of producing music, his mode is to keep the guitar under five, usually on three, because it allows him to turn the amplifier up louder. He makes an incredibly important point about hearing protection, and as a motorcyclist who rode for years with a half shell, I cannot agree more. If wind noise going past your ears can destroy your hearing, a really loud amplifier definitely can. While I am fortunate to have retained a good deal of high frequency hearing over the decades, I have been exposed, as Dave talked about, to players who have played loud and wrecked their hearing over time such that they crank the treble and the presence to what sounds good to them and is an ice pick to the skull of others.

Back to the point. Three huh? I was skeptical. The reason was simple. My experience was that if the guitar was at eight and I rolled off the volume, the treble would take a vacation to Mexico or somewhere else. I do not like this, because I don’t like losing the highs just because I rolled off volume. In fact, I have been considering a mod designed by Lindy Fralin that makes a change to your volume pot wiring specifically to reduce this treble loss. I’ve also gone to fifties wiring on many of my guitars (with many more to go) because it sounds better than the kludgefest that has come since then. I’m not stuck 70 years in the past, I just like the sound better. On a sidebar, if you are looking for incredible sounding pickups, do check out what Mr. Fralin has to offer. I’ve gone to Fralins in my Jazzmasters which has been a sea change for them and turned a decent enough Mexican Strat into a brilliant guitar with Fralin Pure ‘54s.

Oh yeah back to that point.

I picked up my 1960 reissue ES-355, and dialed the volume controls to three. I plugged it into the board that feeds a dry/wet combination of a Fender Blackface Twin and a Fender FSR Blues Deluxe. All the modulations, delays and reverbs go to the Blues Deluxe exclusively, while the clean and driven tones go to both amps. With the guitar at three, it sounded really fine except it was hard to hear. I checked the Twin. The volume knob (no master) was between 1 and 2. On the Blues Deluxe it was at 1 with the Master at about nine o’oclock. I use a Radial ABY box to bring the pair together as dry / wet, so I brought them up individually and turned them up. The Twin is now running at about five. The Blues Deluxe is at five with its Master at noon. The reality is that they are both about as loud as they were, maybe a bit louder than with the ES-355 volume knobs at eight and the amps turned down.

Big Surprises

I had gone in expecting low settings on the guitar to be a tone suck. I was wrong. The guitar sounded awesome, with in my opinion an even greater frequency response, with tighter bass and open highs without being brittle. That guitar has a set of Tim Mills’ Bare Knuckle Stormy Monday pickups, that Tim graciously took the time to recommend personally. I mentioned Lindy Fralin earlier, and I will also always recommend Tim Mills. He’s a complete gentlemen and I have his pickups in my Micawber, the ES-355 and an old PRS Custom 22 has a set of his PG Blues. What’s my point? With the amps turned up and the guitar turned down, I had the same volume in the guitar room but what is in my opinion, much better sound. I am letting the amps do what they need to do. Because the guitar pots are so low, I also have more dynamic range available to me. When I was younger and my hair was brown, those knobs never got touched. For the last several years I’ve been using the knobs a lot more, but never rolling them off to three. Once I found that I was not losing high end, I was really inspired to play more. And did. And yes, I did see what happened when I rolled the volume up. Things started to shake and stuff starting leaping off shelves. So I rolled back. For leads, a rollup to five was all it took. I did have to start over with my drive pedals because they were getting a lot less on the inputs, but it was quick work and I am now able to get more out of the drives on that Twin board which are an Origin Systems Revival Drive and a Demon Pedals Kondo Shifuku which is purported to give you the tones of a Dumble. I’ve never played through a Dumble so wouldn’t know but I know that until this experiment, that pedal was getting no use because I could not get a tone that pleased me out of it. It’s now usable.

Since I do like wet / dry I was also pleased that I could get more out of the modulation, delay and reverb pedals. If an amp has reverb, I use Dan Steinhardt’s model for setting baseline reverb on the amp, and then supplement from pedals as needed. In the case of this board, the pedals include a NEO Instruments Microvent 122, a Jam Pedals Ripply Fall and a Source Audio Collider Delay / Reverb. More open, more airy, what I call better.

Does It Work Elsewhere?

Next up was to try this on a Blackstar Club 40. I have always used this amp for only its clean channel because I could not get decent in amp drive tones that I liked. Made the volume changes on the amp across the board and played my Lucille through it. The Lucille is not a very bright guitar, but with the volumes at three, I was getting a level of brightness that I had never heard from it, making the tone controls much more useful for tone shaping. Moving the Varitone to position two (allegedly the fave of a certain Mr. B.B. King) I was able to get awesome tone, particularly from the neck pickup with the tone rolled off a bit and the Diamond compressor kicked in at unity gain. Kicking in the Ceriatone Klon clone required a bit more gain than had been set, but it was lovely once done. Even the Frost Giant Mountain, which is to my mind a Rat clone was more usable. Heck, even the OD1 and OD2 in amp options are usable now. This amp is not in a wet / dry pair, so the modulation, delays and reverbs are all in the same pedal chain. It’s a busy board, so I spent my time working my Dawner Prince faves, the Boonar drum delay and the Pulse rotary. Exemplary. By the way, I set the amp back to 40 watt mode from 4 watt mode. Sounds better and less likely to end up as a trade in or sale.

In another room where I do some recording are a Tone King Imperial Mark II and a new to me hand wired Vox AC30. By setting the volume pot on a new PRS CE24 to three, I had the opportunity to reduce the built in attenuator on the Tone King and turn the rhythm channel volume to noon and do the same thing to the lead channel. Switching to the Vox, I actually rolled the channel two volume down slightly and raised the master volume to reduce the amount of in amp breakup. In general I like to go clean on the amps and add dirt via pedals. I got a sound I had never heard from any VOX that I have owned. I liked it but found it a bit icy, so rolled the channel volume up a bit to get a little bit of in amp breakup starting and rolled back the master to accommodate. Once I had the amps dialed in, it was time for the pedal check. I had to turn the gain up on both the ODR Mini and the JHS Morning Glory while reducing their output to get a drive tone that I liked, and still have some work to do tweaking the Morning Glory as I think it is looking for more coming in. I may move the Clover boost before the Morning Glory to see if that helps. The Clover boost has been an always on pedal at unity gain to get a bit more openness. I’m not sure that’s going to be needed full time. Playing time will tell.

I had some other work to do, and did not get to any of the Marshalls, or the standard AC30C2 or the PRS Dallas. They all live in a switched world with each as a selectable dry amp partnered with a Koch Multitone as the wet amp because it has so very much headroom. My experiments are far from done, but what I have learned so far suggests that I won’t be going back to guitars set at ten.

One scenario where his experiment did not create value and actually reduced tonal footprint was on a board that ends at a Strymon Iridium. The Iridium is switched to either go to an Apollo interface or to a pair of FRFR speakers. The Iridium simulates an amplifier but effects earlier in the chain, particularly a fuzz just weren’t getting enough signal from the guitar to be effective. As I am not really a fuzz person, this is less an issue for me than it might be for others, but in general I will recommend against the changes if you are running into an amp simulator and using individual pedals as part of your signal chain.

Enormous thanks to Rick and Dave for their idea. This is the kind of stuff that makes playing even more fun. Thanks for reading. If you have questions on this project, please hit me up here. Until next time peace.