Where do you set your knobs?

[Haole Jim]

Many years ago, a fairly hot guitarist-acquaintance said to always set the guitar's knobs on "full on" because the pots were only subtractive. 'Made sense.

Recently, while netting, 'found an opinionated Scott Grove (Groovy Music Lessons) saying precisely the same thing. He also showed a custom guitar with NO volume and tone knobs, only pickup switches.

He phrased it as, "The only way your amp can hear what your guitar really sounds like is with the knobs full-on (no subtraction).

Thoughts?

[Greg_L]

Full power all the time. I like to goof around with rolling the guitar knobs, but when I'm doing some serious recording or gigging, it's wide open throttle.

[StevieSTL]

Volume at 'eleven', of course.

[Mr. Bill]

Just by adding the volume and tone circuitry to the pickup output, you are changing the volume and/or tone of the pickup output, so compared to a guitar wired with no controls, even setting the knobs at 10 the sound will be different. They do make "no load" controls that will effectively take the resistance out of the circuit when set to 10, but I haven't tried them.

If I am just playing a guitar, I will set the volume to 10 and leave it there and use the amp's volume control to set the volume. I will adjust the guitar's tone control to suit the sound that I am looking for.

If I am playing in a live group situation I always have to use the volume and tone controls to fit the situation.

[SanchoPansen]

Same here. I used to go to 11 all the time, but forced myself to make more use of the tone and volume control.
And it really helps. I can highly recommend it! Of course, if you are playing in a Ramones style band, you won't have to adjust anything.
But playing Ventures style music will take you to another level of guitar useage, IMO.
We play Bulldog (all on 10!) and Moon over Manakoora (Vol. + Tone on ~7). If I leave the pots open on Moon it will not have that lush and mellow tone and the icepicking is near, especially in the last part of the song. Also it helps for songs with vocals. If I just want a strumming acoustic type of sound, I dial down the volume, so the vocals can cut through the mix more easily and the guitar is just coloring the background.
I'd say it all depends on the music you are playing, but hey: the pots are there anyway. Why not give it a try?

[Hydra19]

i also mainly play with everything on 10, mostly on the Mosrites. On the Les Paul, blending the volume and tone controls, with both pickups on is great because you can come up with interesting tones, especially with one tone control all the way off.
On the Fender Jaguar, I find rolling down the volume control to about 7-8, and tone on 10, helps get rid of the ice pick highs.

I mostly use volume control on the guitar when I'm playing at low volume, but want to keep the amp a bit higher on volume.
I imagine if I'd play more at higher volumes I'd use more of the controls on all 4 of my guitars.

So, though I like to play with everything on 10, I find to really refine my sound, I would probably need to adjust to the situation with both controls. Of course, playing with distortion is another thing, and go full throttle but I still love the Les Paul with all of it tonal abilities using the knobs, clean or distorted

[inspace]

I find it depends a lot on the amp. Some combinations respond really well by turning the amp right up and controlling everything on the guitar. I do that with a '58 deluxe and some Trainwreck types that I rolled myself. It can be kind of noisy, but worth it.
There are pickups that really seem to change their character depending on where the volume is set, but I have not noticed it that much on the Mosrite yet. More so on the really old Gibson P90s.

[vjf1968]

Neil Young's "Old Balck" has the pick ups wired directly to the output jack so it docent even see the volume or tone controls. So there is validity to the claim. However I find with the right settings you can get some interesting tonal variations by rolling back the volume. Jimmy Page used that to great effect on his Les Pauls. Page would have the front pick volume set lower for rhythm or undistorted leads and have the back pick up set full-on for soloing. Very effective for dynamics and for getting more tonal mileage out of an amp.

It really depends on you're playing style and what you're trying to achieve within the context of you're playing environment.

Personally I would take anything Scott Groves says with a grain of salt. He makes good points but his attitude of "I'm right and everyone else is wrong" can rub most folks the wrong way. I tend to watch YouTube clips by Pete Thorne and Nick Jaffe who are active musicians and are very good and getting right to the point and minus the attitude. The other thing that annoys me about Scott Groves is his juvenile comments when someone disagrees with him. True it is his channel and he can do what he wants but when he comes out and says he would like to kill Rob Chapman and Lee Anderton, that stuff makes me not want to watch his channel regularly. There is enough negativity in the world so I don't watch

I don't know what Scott Groves does for a living but my guess is equipment rentals. He has had a long career playing music so when he talks about rehearsing and playing live then you should give him your full attention. There ares points he made about musicians and lead singers that have rung true for me many times. But to get to those kernels of wisdom you have to sit through and hour of rambling.