Messing With the Electric

Alright, crash course for anyone just picking up an electric guitar (like me!):

First thing that's actually really awesome, is that all the tuning pegs are on the same side. No more snapping that G-string! Turn the tuning pegs Away from you to tighten the strings, and toward you to loosen them. As you can also see, there are two metal platforms that hold down the highest four strings (DGBe). This becomes important when re-stringing your guitar-- all you have to do is make sure the strings feed under the hooks.








Next thing: there are so many ways to mess with the tone on an electric guitar, especially between the dials on the guitar and the amp. If you watch the video below, you'll get a quick tutorial plus you'll be able to hear the changes that each dial causes (and if I sound like I'm pretty new to this...........I am):



Other than that, here's a brief and probably more organized tutorial of what all the dials do:

First of all, the changes in tone are possible because of these three pickups. The top one is sensitive to lower tones; the middle one, to middle tones; and the last one, to higher tones. The principle way of controlling these is with this switch and these tone dials:



















The switch has five settings: all the way to the top is the top pickup, or the lowest tones. Next is the top and middle pickup. The middle setting turns on the middle pickup. The fourth position turns on the middle and bottom pickup. Last setting turns on just the last pickup, which means you'll get more of the higher notes.

The next way of controlling tone is with the two dials: the top dial controls the top pickup, and the bottom dial controls the bottom pickup. Basically, if you for example, turn the top pickup all the way up and the bottom pickup off, you'll get a very twangy sound. If you use just the top pickup, youll get a very full, bassy sound. To change the tone on the middle pickup, you have to play with both dials.

The last thing you can do to change the tone with the pickups has to do with where you play: if you strum closer to the top pickup, you'll get a much fuller sound, where strumming over the last pickup will give you a very twangy sound.

As if that weren't complicated enough, there's also the dials on the amp. This one has three channels, all of which have volume dials, in addition to the master volume. Then there are the tone dials, low dnd high. Low gets the bassy notes, and high gets the higher notes. I've been told that for playing live, it's best to turn the high knob up most of the way, and the low knob a little bit less so.


Yes, this does seem quite overwhelming at first. And by at first I mean that I'm still overwhelmed by it. It's very difficult to get the right sound for certain songs, especially when you're not familiar with this kind of equipment-- or this kind of control. Usually when I'm playing I'll set the pickup switch to either the second or fourth setting, I'll put the tone dials about halfway, and I strum between the first two pickups. Mostly, you just have to play with it to figure out what everything does, and what sounds good for which songs.

The key here though, which I can't stress enough, is BALANCE. Some people love to pump up the bass, and I can tell you primarily as a listener that it is not appealing when you can't hear the singer or the high notes of the song. That said though, it sounds very unattractive as well when you turn the bass all the way down, so that all you get is a low hum in the background while the high strings are buzzing against the frets. Sometimes it's cool to play around at the extremes of high tones or low tones so you get a sense for what everything does. But please, for the love of God, balance the tones when you're actually playing.

That is all.

-Kal