Originally Posted by: dlwalkeI'm wondering how redundant the guitar's tone control knob is with the amp's EQ section. Most amps that I've seen have low, midrange and high EQ knobs whereas the single tone control on the guitar is more limited. Why then does the guitar have a tone control at all. Is there something you can do, or some way that you can impact the sound coming out of your amp by using the guitar's control knob that you can't do as well or better with the amps EQ section? Is it mostly because when playing live it's easier and quicker to do tone adjustments from your guitar?
Just adding here.
Think of any tone knob (pot) as doing one thing; either allowing or limiting a sound frequency signal to pass through to the end (speaker). In the case of the pot on the guitar, it allows frequencies to pass to the cable jack (which then passes to the amp).
With this in mind, from the guitar, you're deciding how much of a sound frequency is hitting the amp. Very powerful. When you have the tone pot pegged at 10, you're sending all frequncies generated from the pickup. When you 'roll it off', you limit the higher frequencies passing from your guitar to your amp.
It would seem logical to not bother with the tone pot on the guitar and just focus on EQing the amp. Fair enough and was pretty much the only way I EQ'd for a very long time. In a way, if you have more amp gain, the less it seems to matter how you set the tomne control.
But.....
It's all about the highs. Raemember that an amp is driven by what you send it from the guitar. The lesson I learned is that a combo amp I often used would become very 'high endy' the louder I turned it up no matter my amp tone EQ. I would roll off the tone on the guitar to offset. The amp was getting less high end sound at that point.
Eric Clapton was a very adept user of the tone control and it was his secret weapon for tone.
Thin of it this way, you may have 3 EQ knobs on the amp but you have 4 EQ controls overall. TAhe amp setting and the guitar's tone pot as a fine tuner.
