SIGNAL CHAIN
DEAN FARLEY
Pot Luck
Dean F’s custom 1981 Dean Z.
How’s everybody doing? This month I’ve
decided to examine one of my old habits, just
so you won’t have to be as limited as I once
was. Specifically, I’m talking about the non-use
of the guitar’s volume and tone pots. Believe
it or not, way back when, I never used my
volume or tone controls (except to set them
to full blast), because if I lowered them even a
smidge, the resulting tone would be nothing
but muddy! This was really annoying, because
I had to control the final tonal shaping with
the amplifier’s tone controls instead. I basically
had nowhere to go, unless I wandered over to
the amp to make some tonal changes there,
which I viewed as a hassle, of course. As a
result, I had to be satisfied with my sound
as it was. This old habit manifested itself in
other ways, too, such as eventually having
guitars made with no tone pots at all. My ‘ 81
custom Dean Z is a great example; it isn’t
stock wiring at all. I acquired this habit based
upon the experiences I’d had earlier with my
1969 Gibson Super 400. During this time I was
primarily a Gibson player, and my quality time
with Fenders was still a few years ahead of me.
Eureka
In the early ‘80s, I built a Stratocaster-style
guitar from parts, and I was just about blown
out of my socks when I discovered that the
instrument sounded great at every setting
of the tone and volume controls. It was a
surprise, but also a big relief. The bell of
freedom was ringing loud and clear. As a
result of this discovery, I did an about-face
and became primarily a Fender player—
though the Super 400 remained my main jazz
guitar. It wasn’t too far into the future that
I found out I could get amazing jazz tones
from a Telecaster or Stratocaster too. The
main reason was that the Fender’s lower-value potentiometers would allow a nice
tonal variety to come out of the instrument,
whereas the Gibson instrument wouldn’t
do quite the same thing. At first I thought
this was simply the difference between
single-coil and humbucking pickups. Upon
further investigation, however, I found out
that my Gibson Super 400 had 300K-ohm
potentiometers installed in it instead of the
normal 500K-ohm standard pots that had
been used before. “So, that’s where the
problem was,” I realized.
Some 14 years later, I found my jazz guitar
soulmate in a Gibson Wes Montgomery L- 5
model. I’ll never forget what happened when
I turned the tone control down to around
4: it sounded downright… well, right! The
tone was big and smooth, and there was no
need to go through the puddle of dark mud
either. As it turned out, this dream L- 5 I had
just found had 500K-ohm pots installed stock
from the factory. Another priceless tonal
moment had occurred.
This leads me into another related subject,
which is the use of volume pedals. A lot of
people use these on their pedalboards to
control just their overall volume level. When
you control the guitar’s volume from your
instrument, you will notice shades of tonal
variety as the volume control is decreased,
whereas going the route of the volume
pedal, generally speaking, demands that
the instrument volume control remain on
full—unless you have the volume pedal set
all the way up (full forward throw) and you
wish to use the instrument’s volume control
instead. That’s the workaround if you ever
find yourself in the one-tone territory. Going
further into this, you will eventually find
out that there are wide differences in the
measurements of any particular batch of
potentiometers. They might be marked 250K,
but they can measure much less or much
more than what’s marked. I’ve seen some
250K pots measure as high as nearly 400K
or as low as 190K. Because of this, I always
have my guitar tech pick out potentiometers
that are closely rated to avoid any possibility
of losing my tonal integrity. I may seem to be
nitpicking here to some folks, but to me my
tone is important... because it’s mine.
At the end of the day, individuality in tone is
a huge part of your style, and if it is going to
stand out from the crowd, you’ll have to do
some digging to find out exactly what makes
all of the elements of your chosen signal chain
work together in a way that shows your playing
off in the most flattering light. There’s nothing
I can think of that can make you more pleased
with your own music than finding yourself
shining through every live (or recorded)
performance. The moral of this story is to look
into the reasons why something might be “off”
for you, some odd thing that may have caused
you to develop habits that ultimately limit
you and keep you from your total and fullest
musical expression. Armed with knowledge,
you can get to where you want to be sooner
rather than later. The devil is indeed in the
details. We’ll see you next month.
Dean Farley
is the chief designer of Snake Oil Brand Strings
and has had a profound influence on the trends
in the strings of today.
