"Serious Tone for the Serious Musician"

Secrets of Hot Rodding

     Tone is everything. Well, here’s the big surprise. Killer tones don’t just happen, you have to know how to make them happen. Even Eric Clapton had to take various parts off of a number of different guitars to piece together the one that was to become his favorite. And of course there is a lot more technology available to us today.

     This publication will talk about the basic electronics in your guitar - how it works and how to manipulate it to perform more to your liking. Just because a guitar came a certain way doesn’t mean it is the best way. A great deal of improvement can be added to your guitar quite easily, and these changes can easily be reversed if you should ever desire to go back to the original design. We’ll also show you some of the trick devices we use to get killer tones.

     So how do you create the ultimate guitar? Read on for some tips. 

Parts of the following are taken from articles I’ve written for Bay Area Music Market Magazine, with the addition of some new information.

     Hot Rodding falls into the following three categories:

     Sonically - How does the guitar sound overall? Is it the tone that you want to hear? Listen to each one of the guitars pickups. Do you like them all? Just one? None? If you could improve them would you make them hotter, sweeter, brighter, fatter, quieter, etc.? Would you like more versatility, i.e., trick wiring options, better tone controls, etc.?

     Playability - Does the guitar stay in tune? Are you getting rattles and buzzes when you play? Are you breaking strings? Are the frets too low? Too high? Can you adjust the action where you want it? How’s it sustain? Do you have dead spots?

     Visually - Do you like the way your guitar looks? What would you change, the pickguard? Hardware? Body color?

     Remember the whole idea is to create your ideal guitar.

     Before we get started, let’s understand a couple of electronic terms that we’ll be using.

     Resistor: This electronic component is used to control the flow of electrons. It’s ability to control the electronic flow is expressed in ohms and is indicated by the colored bands on the resistor. The larger the value of the resistor, the more the electronic flow is restricted.

     Capacitor: This component is generally used as a tonal filter. Values for smaller capacitors (caps) are expressed in pico farads, and for larger values in micro farads.

     Potentiometer: This is the device that is used for volume and tone controls. Electronically they more nothing more than variable resistors, with typical values being 250k to 500k.

Here is a simple, but effective way to boost the gain on your guitar for a hotter sound.

     When we think of boosting tonal performance on our guitars, at least when it is in the direction of creating a hotter sound with more gain and output, we tend to conjure up images of changing pickups or adding preamps. These are, of course, tried and true methods to heat up your sound, and do offer a dramatic change in tone, but with a more substantial investment required on your part. How about an effective, but inexpensive alternative?

     First let’s get an understanding of how this control works. The volume control is a variable resistor, actually two variable resistors, called a potentiometer which controls the flow of the signal coming from the guitar’s pickups. The potentiometer has three terminals on it. One terminal is connected to ground, one is the input and is connected to the pickups, and the middle terminal, the output of the guitar, is attached internally to a conductive element known as the wiper. As you turn the shaft on the potentiometer, it moves the wiper. Moving it one direction increases the resistance between the wiper and grounded terminal, and at the same time decreases the resistance between the wiper and pickup terminal. Of course, moving the wiper in the opposite direction will produce the opposite result. When the volume control is on 10, there is no resistance between the wiper and the terminal of the pot which the pickups are attached to, and there is maximum resistance between the wiper and the terminal attached to ground. When you are at 0, there is no resistance between the wiper and the terminal attached to ground. This means your guitar is "grounded out" which effectively turns your guitar off. Now how is knowing this going to give out a hotter sound.

     Simple. Remember that a potentiometer is basically two resistors in one housing. On a typical volume pot of 250k ohms there is a portion of the signal being bled off from the 250k ohm resistance between the wiper and the terminal connected to ground. This "loads down" the signal from the guitar before it gets to the amp and knocks off quite a bit of gain. The trick to getting a hotter sound out of your guitar is to increase the resistance here. All you need to do is put in a higher value pot. The higher the pot, the higher the resistance, the less your signal will be bled to ground and more of your signal will make it to your amp. You’ll find your guitar will become louder, more aggressive, and more full-bodied with an increase in top-end brilliance. The results can be absolutely amazing.

     The general rule I use is as follows: For extremely hot pickups I use a Mega² Output Volume Pot (2 meg). For medium-hot pickups I use a Mega Output Volume Pot (1 meg). For lower output pickups, like a Strat, I use a 500k pot. If you follow this rule, you shouldn’t have any problems. Of course you aren’t limited to this. I have had customers use a Mega Output Pot with vintage Strat-style pickups and liked the results. It comes down to personal taste. The downside to using too large a pot is that the guitar can sound too aggressive or harsh. Of course, you can always turn the volume control down when you need a sweeter, more mellower sound.

      One word of caution with Mega and Mega² Output pots - the threading on the shaft of the pot is only 14/64". This means that it will only mount on a pickguard unless you want to attempt to grind away some wood in the control cavity of guitars that have their controls mounted directly to the guitar body.

Tone Controls

     Nearly every guitar comes equipped with a tone control. I get asked quite frequently from not only beginning guitar players, but seasoned pros as to the purpose of this control. It is designed to allow you to remove varying degrees of highs from your guitar to give you a mellower, warmer, smoother, less biting tone. It can be especially nice for rhythm as the reduced highs allow the instrument to slip into the background more easily. At least, this is the theory.

     Component-wise these controls consist of two parts - a capacitor and a potentiometer - which are wired in a configuration that as you turn the potentiometer (pot) towards 1, it bleeds off part of the guitar’s signal to ground via the capacitor. The larger the cap, the further the range of frequencies that will be filtered out. Typical values for the pot are 250k or 500k and for the cap, .1, .05, or .02 micro farad (mfd.). The general rule of thumb has been to use the larger value caps, .1 or .05 mfd. for single-coil equipped guitars, and smaller values, .05 or .02 mfd., for humbucking equipped guitars. The logic behind this is that single-coils are much brighter sounding and need a larger cap to adequately reduce the top end. Well here’s a hint. Don’t listen to the rule of thumb. Using too large a cap will give you a muddy, muffled tone and can even cause a loss in volume. This is the reason most people leave their tone controls on 10. If you are experiencing this type of problem with your tone control, change the cap to a smaller value. If you feel real adventurous, go down to the local electronics store and pick up an assortment of caps - .1, .05 (or .047), .03, .02, etc. - and choose for yourself. Don’t assume the manufacturer picked the correct cap for you, especially if you have changed pickups on your guitar.

     I prefer using smaller caps. Eric Clapton was able to use these controls to devastating effect by using smaller than normal caps on his tone controls and then rolling the tone all the way off to create what he nicknamed "woman tone". This would give him a warm, thick sound that would make certain notes more prone for feedback and actually achieved a tone that had a sort of "growl" to it. If you think about it, how many tones are you aware of that have actually been given a name? Not many.

     Now let’s take the idea of tone controls and move in a different direction. Many musicians want to be able to change the sound of their guitars, but want to do more than just roll off the highs. This can be done very easily and usually does not require drilling any holes or defacing the guitar in any way.

     Here are some of these more versatile tone controls, some of which are exclusive to Griblin Engineering:

     TBX Tone Control - This is a Fender designed product that is used on many of their guitars, like the Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck Signature Models, American Standard, Strat Plus Series, etc. This control acts as a normal tone control from 1 to 5 (using a .022 cap) and boosts high end and brilliance from 5 to 10. Can be nice for adding extra presence to the neck pickup or for making the bridge pickup especially cutting without losing the function of a normal tone control.

    Midrange Sucker - Just as the name implies. Instead of rolling the high end off, this control pulls the midrange frequencies out and leaves the high and low frequencies intact. This can make for a dramatic change in your sound by allowing you to get amplified acoustic-like or hollowbody-like tones. What’s more if you are playing with a dirty, overdriven sound, you can use this control to "clean up" your tone at any time. This is effective because a great deal of the distortion we hear from guitars takes place in the midrange frequencies. Works equally well with single coil or humbucking pickups.

     Advanced Midrange Control - Takes the idea of the Midrange Sucker one step further. From 1 to 5 it gives you all the benefits that a Midrange Sucker has, but when you turn the control from 5 to 10 you get a thicker, hotter sound. Designed for use with Strats and most single-coil equipped guitars, but will also work with humbuckers as well, although the effect of the control from 5 to 10 is not as dramatic since humbuckers are already thick sounding. Originally this control was only available as part of our Custom Wiring Harness for Strats, but the demand was so great from our customers that had purchased the Harness and wanted to add this control to additional guitars, that we decided to make it available separately.

     Woman Tone Control - This is going back to the idea of using a control to roll of the highs, but using a specific value capacitor, not used on any other guitars, and a specific type of capacitor for much better performance. Under clean settings you can roll off your highs without adding muddiness, and when you are in overdrive you can get smooth and creamy notes and a great "growling" tone where certain notes stand out and feedback more easily.

     Multi-tone - Gibson invented the varitone a number of years ago and continues to use it on certain selected models. B.C. Rich has also used a version of this control on many of their guitars and Griblin Engineering offers their take on this unique control although with a broader choice of tones, called the Multi-tone. This device is a six position rotary switch that uses capacitance and inductance to filter out part of the signal to give the guitar a completely different voice. The first position on the switch is a bypass (to retain the stock sound) and the remaining five are used to pull out different frequencies. Some positions are more subtle for a slight variation of the stock sound, others will give you a glassy, transparent tone or a honking, out of phase sound, etc. Works great on all types of guitars. Keep in mind that the threading on the shaft if 16/64" if you are going to mount it through a guitar body.

     Super Multi-tone - If you take a Multi-tone and add a separate push/pull pot that allows you to 1) operate as a Woman Tone Control and 2) change the inductance of the Multi-tone to give you 5 additional sounds for a total of 10 sounds from your Multi-tone, you would have an extremely versatile tone modifier. Slightly more complicated to operate than a conventional tone control due the variety of tones available, this is meant for the player who likes to experiment for just the right sound.

     Woman Tone/Midrange Sucker - Built on a push/pull pot, this is a Woman Tone Control that becomes a Midrange Sucker when you lift up on the knob. Perfect for guitars with limited space for extra controls (like a Tele) as it gives you two separate controls while only using one control location.

     Woman Tone/Advanced Mid - Another one built on a push/pull pot. This is a Woman Tone control that becomes an Advanced Midrange Control when you lift up on the knob. Another strong choice for guitars with limited space for additional controls.

     Spectrum 1 - This type of tone control is different from the previous in that it is an active control. It is powered by an on-board 9 volt battery and can actually "boost" certain frequencies and/or the entire signal of the guitar for a much hotter sound. The controls consist of a dual-section pot, similar to the ones you find on a car stereo, which has one knob sitting on top of another. One of the knobs controls the boosting and cutting of the midrange frequencies, and the other knob independently controls the amount of gain. An incredible amount of versatility for those of you who want one guitar to do about 12 different things. Keep in mind that you need to have enough room in your guitar to mount a small circuitboard and a 9 volt battery.

     Chandler Tone-X - Players like Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck have been known to get some great sounds from their guitars. One of their tricks was to take a wah wah pedal and use it as an active tone control instead of as a crying device. The wah wah circuit can be used to create a muted sound, or as a treble booster, or can be used to find the "sweet spot" on your guitar to help you get some gnarling feedback. This active circuit lets you do all that right from your guitar. The circuitboard is installed right on a push/pull pot and of course is powered by a 9 volt battery. Lift up on the pot and you turn it on, push down on it and it is bypassed. This really wakes up your guitar and is currently part of the standard electronics on many of the Chandler guitars.

     Most guitar players have noticed that when they turn the volume control down, they lose a lot of the high end. Amplifiers have the same problem, which is why some amps have a bright channel or bright switch built into them. Basically they use a capacitor across the input and output terminals of the volume pot (the terminals that are not grounded) to allow highs to escape across the pot. It’s easy to install and only comes into effect when you are at less than full volume. For most players, 250 pf. seems about right. For those who want a little less, try 150 pf., and for those who want a little more, try 470 pf. to 500 pf. Fender tried this same idea on the Telecaster some years ago, but used too large a value for the capacitor (.001 mfd. or 1000 pf.). For those of you who can’t find the right parts, we sell a Treble Kit complete with parts and instructions to help correct this problem.

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