Gibson Les Paul Tone & Volume Control _ Knob Tutorial _ Guitar Lesson

Welcome to another round of my little demo series today .

I don't want to show you uh a guitar like usual .

Um Of course , I do .

I mean , here you have it .

It's a yeah , mid nineties Gibson , Les Paul Standard um with a very , very beautiful sunbird .

Look at this .

Yeah , not too shabby , but today I want to make something different because many people wrote to me uh via the message function uh in youtube or they also did write it in the comment section .

Um They want to learn more about how to achieve certain tones .

Um um Of course , this is a very complicated question .

Um How do I start ?

I thought to myself , not every guitar player is playing in a band and playing live on a big stage with his own equipment .

The reality of starving musicians today is that they meet in some nice town clubs where they have open stages and typically there's just uh uh if it's a good club , a tube amp and you stand there on stage and think to yourself , oh shit , this um even at a foot switch to select different channels or something like that .

OK .

So back to the basics , what many guitar players don't realize , especially the younger ones , but not only them is that you have volume and tone knobs on your guitar .

And II I um will demonstrate you how you can achieve .

Uh yeah , a certain variety of very different sounds with just one amplifier setting just by using the knobs on the guitar and of course your fingers , um I'd say half of the sound is coming from your fingers .

Um , if the sound is not coming from your fingers , there's something wrong .

You should work with your fingers .

Uh , just every day playing , playing , playing .

Look how I did set up this amplifier here .

This is a 50 watts , uh marshall tube pad .

And as you can see every single knob is turned to the 12 o'clock position .

That's it more you don't need with this setting with this simple , very simple setting , isn't it ?

Um , you simply make sure before you play the first tone that your tone knobs .

In this case , those two here on the last part , your toe knobs are fully cranked , open good and your volumes are closed down zero volume .

Now you go to the rubble pickup position and you just bring up the volume a little bit .

Ok .

Now you go in the middle position , you don't hear anything , Paul and you bring up the second volume from the , um , neck pickup at approximately the same level .

Like the trouble we got and what you have now is a rather thick and even jazzy tone .

Yeah , it's not sensational but it's a very nice warm tone and now I go to the travel position and I turn up the volume half wise , that's different .

That's the difference .

I didn't stomp on any stomp box .

I didn't turn on any trouble booster .

I didn't turn on any big muff or what the hell tube screamer .

These are all nice devices but not in the situation .

We are talking about .

You are alone with your amplifier and your guitar on a foreign stage .

So now you have two sounds and those two sounds you control simply with a wall , you knob and the pick up switch .

So here you have a crunchy uh distortion rhythm sound .

You can rock the house and now you turn back the volume up of the travel , pick up to the first position , which was two here in my case , I see the two and then set the pick up selector switch for both .

Wow , of course , with a little bit sensible playing you out back uh in your jazzy clean tone .

And if you have a little bit more sensibility in your fingers , you can pull both volumes a little bit further down and you are more in the funky region a little bit further down and the crunch will go away .

Who would have thought that ?

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Why that I can and uh explain better to you what , what big difference it makes , where the tone knob is , depending on where the volume knob is set up in this amplifier set up because the , the , the , the tone and volume here will react very different from a pure clean channel set up .

So if you have an amplifier with a clean channel and stomp on the foot switch that we are in the clean channel , the tone will react different like it is right now here in the set up where the amplifier gain is set to 12 o'clock position .

So listen for yourself what I can do just from the tono .

That's very extreme .

No more brilliance , but it's nice too , but not for every purpose fit for every purpose .

And I'll bring it up just by three position .

Three .

It shines a little bit more pro I turn it up to five now I turn it to 10 .

So that's quite a difference .

I have at least three very different tones in my hands .

Just with the tone knob at this volume position , it will react different depending on other volume settings .

So if so in general , if I go higher with the gain , you will hear less of the influence of the tone knot .

So if you are in lower ranges , let's say from 0 to 5 with your volume , you will hear bigger differences with your um tone control .

Um , and just listen to that , I bring up the volume to three and I have the tone uh to zero and now half , half up at the same time , I don't hit the string so hard that the difference in the sound is not too extreme .

Now , I bring it fully up and hit the strings hard .

And what I heard here are three totally different tones .

If only one pick up with only changing the tone control .

And if you practice this a little bit and get used to the uh to the uh effects which are different from neck to bridge pick up , you will have at least 5 to 6 different sounds at your hand with only one guitar , one cable running in your amplifier , which is not your own with one amplifier setting , which is just a default setting , 12 o'clock position , every note .

All right .

So you heard some wrong notes , I'm sure about this .

But hey , I'm only human and I didn't want to win any prize here .

I just want to give you an idea what you can achieve with just one guitar , one cable in one amplifier , which is even on your own .

So given that you are uh um arriving in a club with an open stage or a room um with people you don't know and you want to make a good figure .

Um Just go there , take this amplifier , turn every knob on mid or 12 o'clock position .

Uh Of course , if it's a 400 watts , so find it just the mass volume a little bit down , you are allowed to take it down , but give it , give the amplifiers a certain volume for this method to work .

So this method will not work um Very good if the amplifier is turned down in volume , uh like if you're playing at home , this will not work .

Um But on stage where you have a little bit of power , go to the mid position .

And then I wish you a lot of fun in finding out great tones in your guitar .

You may never heard before because you never thought that these knobs here uh can turn , can be turned not only fully cranked up or fully closed down , so they also have something in between and interact .

Um It's a nice field to experiment and I wish you a nice musical inspiration and hope that it was not too boring for you .

So uh if you like this video rate it , of course , uh leave a comment um or send me a message .

I will try my best to help uh the folks in music .

Bye bye .

See you next time .