I love the middle position on dual humbucker equipped guitars. It’s a pity that a lot of RU-vidrs don’t demo that on their reviews. Both of your tones show how good this sounds and the sound around the 3:18 min mark with the neck on full and bridge dialed back is a fave of mine. Greetings from NZ 🎸🤘
So I am not a guitar player, but am a musician, did some time on the road, and a teacher. This was awesome for helping me understand why guitar players are such geeks about their sound and how their amps are amplified, etc. Wow! I mean I knew, but I really didn’t know and this really helped this novice understand some things on a different level. Thank you!
I think it's helpful to mention that 50s wiring is important to getting these tones...this makes the volume & tone controls more interactive and you don't lose that top end sparkle when rolling the volume back. Play this way with a loud amp and you will see what all the fuss is about. Great video - Joe is the master.
@@aaronbrown0417 The way to get around that is to play with a clean bedroom amp, put a low-gain transparent overdrive like the Morning Glory in front of it and then put a boost in front of that (treble boosters sound awesome). Then you'll be able to mimic the feel of a cranked amp and still have the ability to clean up with your volume knobs.
Wow. My front pickup does NOT have that poppy, airy, open tone at all. Even with adjusting the height up and down to find “my” spot. I can haz Joe’s front pickup tone???
Missed one of the coolest ones! While in middle position, roll back the tone knob for the bridge pickup and have remaining three knobs on 10, get a cool nasal almost out of phase like sound.
Have the guitarist in the band set up with neck full up vol tone rolled a bit Bridge vol back to 7 tone at 7 too This is the standard set up Then when you flip to lead you still have a step from there Keeps middle position clean too
@@mikewilkinson694 One day I might get one Supro amp. I've bought some equipment, mainly pedals and a couple of guitars in this past year, and I need to save some money now. 😁
@@ileutur6863 this. Any PAF type pickup, into an eq to balance the pickup output, then into a screamer,with 0 gain and 100 volume, and finally into an amp, will sound amazing. It's way more about playing the amp and gain staging than it is the value of a piece of wood with a name on a head stock.
Hey jw, i have a new 2023 Gibson Les Paul std. 60’s. I loved the Unburst & 60s neck profile, was Not really a fan of stock 61’ Burstbuckers (Alnico 5’s, on multimeter both read approx around 7.5k installed from factory). I recently had a set of Seymour duncan Slash 2.0 Alnico 2 pro’s installed in my 2023 60’s Gibson les paul standard. (Note i like slash but i got pickups due to what tone i liked best that i felt was what i wanted in my LP to sound like & this set seemed to scatch my itch (loud, little but not overally grittier, rich tone on Slash 2.0’s). After Slash 2.0’s were installed they read 8.6ish on neck & and 9.36k on bridge (advertised as 8.8 neck/9.38 bridge, but was told the pots eat some of the resistance so id only get that exact reading by testing pickups by themselves/directly to multimeter..also jw if true)?. But Main thing i’ve noticed…overall like tone much better..but it feels like i can work with Vol knob to about 7 then lower then 5 is very very quiet , and same with neck knob pot), the sweep seems to be less then my SG & i think i would have noticed if the 61 BB’s had such a lack of sweep. Would higher outpout of different humbuckers effect vol/tone knobs?? I know i have 50 style wiring and i saw him peel back a braided wire and solder it to like top corner of each Vol Cap , let it dry and was basicslly done (aside from small reset up). Does all that sound nomal or should i look into any trouble shooting…installion or pots wise( all i know is 50s style with orange drop caps and i believe 500k pots). Thanks would love any input on lack of sweep on knobs since swap most lol
Try out the middle with the neck tone at 10 and bridge at 0. Gives you an interesting "warble", especially if you have your amp a little past break up. Sounds a little like the tone Jay Graydon got on "Peg" to me.
@@zeronine-eightyfour and if that accidentally happens, I get it repaired..not a big deal. I've owned les pauls before and never broke one headstock..played clubs all over and don't baby these guitars at all. I don't let any miniscule chance of damage stop me from owning my favorite guitar ever made.
@@sixslinger9951 I worked in the past at a guitarstore, it was so extremely common. and I never understood why didnt didnt use a volute or maple necks to prevent it. Gibson is so much held back by "Traditions" it isnt even funny anymore.
@@zeronine-eightyfour Gibson tried to mess with tradition under previous CEO and it didn't work out so well...now they are back building guitars the traditional way and selling them as fast as they can make them. People want Les Paul's obviously and aren't really that concerned with the small risk of breaking them. You can damage and break ANY GUITAR, not just Les Pauls.
I just got my first Les Paul(s) at age 54. I’ve been playing Strats since I was 13. I think I’m gonna put the Strats away for now and delve the music and players of the Les Paul. I got a late 60’s to early 70’s LP Custom Black Beauty, an 00’-60’ LP Classic, a 58’ LPJ. Oh, and a 89’ Flying V 90.
Huge turn !? Strats do their own thing. But short scale is better for my fingers and bending strings are easier. Stratos are much more durable or Teles. If you drop them nothing bad happens but with LesPauls, tears...
@kipponi when I was a teen I had one of my strats fall off the wall mount onto a hard wood floor. Dang thing was still in tune. No chips or any damage.
I really like the back to basics approach of this video which is designed to remind people that the guitar itself is a very dynamic device. We can theorize about the pickup types and the wiring and all the rest of it but the key issue here is use the knobs more and don't just rely on the effects pedals to do it for you...
For the love of all things holy this is an AWFUL display of tone. Talk about ripping your head off with schrill awful noise..... What the hell was Guitar World thinking......
I wish he went over exactly where to put the knobs. He just turns them quickly doesn’t say what level exactly for each position. Awful video for what the purpose was for
There's gotta be something more to this. Adjusting the knobs on my Les Paul doesn't change much but volume. Does the Amp need certain settings to make rolling the guitar knobs have this much affect!?
I'm a drummer originally yet I understand that volume and tone controls are there for a reason yet all my guitar friends think that volume control is a on/off switch and the tone controls are there to make the guitar look cool. Oh, and the neck pickup Is there to add more weight to the guitar. They are talented musicians but never changed the settings and use bridge pickups only! And they say drummers are the dumb ones!
Past my sixties in age and I agree. I keep wondering why some people rabbit on about amp "tone", when a twist of a knob and a flick of a switch on the guitar itself can radically alter the sound. I learned this for myself with a cheap Teisco-type guitar in the 70's. I didn't even have an amp. I tried the phono input on my stereo but settled with hacking an old school supply kind of 5" reel-to-reel tape recorder that had a valve amp. I liked making it distort, LOL.
2:30 - That is my favorite way to dial in a LP for most things. Great rhythm and phrasing tones and by flipping to the bridge only you get the searing leads with highs aplenty to cut through. The middle position with the neck volume dialed back a bit is also great with fuzz pedals. I've wired my Jazzmaster like a Les Paul in order to get the same setup. Works so well in a live situation.
Didn't even think of many of those examples, my treble pup all the way up, only toggle up to front pup on various levels, I gotta try more of what a Paul can do!
burstbuckers in a les paul were designed for vol and tone control effecting sound aggressive when pushing amp or bell sweet butter tones when turned down
Alternate title. 5 different sounds and 5 sounds that sound like the first five that can be done on any guitar with 2 volume 2 tone knobs. I know that’s not catchy but it’s honest
That's great if you own a real Les Paul. The rest of us who have Epiphones or PRS SEs have to deal with crappy volume and tone pots that go from 0-10 immediately with nothing in between.
You have to keep in mind Joe's playing LOUD. A great deal of what you can do with volume pot manipulation doesn't really apply at bedroom volume--as you say, it's basically on/off. Once you crank your amp up to its sweet spot, you open up a whole new world of tones with fairly subtle changes. As for your tone knob, any humbucker-equipped guitar should be able to give you a serviceable Woman tone (or tones) at minimum. If it's really a problem, then that's a cheap mod. If that doesn't fix it but you still like your guitar's playability, then you can also swap out pickups.
Thanks! Your the Number one of my inspiration along with all the great blue celebrities! Thanks for helping keep the blues alive and always reinventing yourself! Thank you :-)
Problem with some modern Les Paul's (or equivalent), particularly cheaper models, is that the pickups don't have the clarity and the controls aren't effective enough to do this. Even my PRS S2 McCarty 594 struggled until I upgraded the electronics. Best upgrade you can make to a dual Humbucker guitar is to fit new pots and pickups (do pots first as often they're the big issue and are cheaper) and make the guitar brighter sounding. You can get rid of brightness with tone pots, you can't add it in without active EQ!!
You can add a bit brightness (or remove a bit) by simply adjusting the distance between each string and the pole screws in a pickup. Increasing the distance by a quarter turn or so will roll off a little bit of the brightness while decreasing the distance will add a little bit of brightness. The changes are subtle so, don't expect huge differences. Larger changes in pole screw height will also increase or decrease the output of the correlating string(s). So, if you don't want to change the overall output of your pickup but, want to adjust the individual output of a string or two, adjusting the string's correlating pole screw is how its done. Its a great way to deep tweak a pickup's tonal characteristics that a lot of players don't ever think about. Cheers!
