Guitar Quick Tip #13: Use Volume To Clean Up The Dirt (Guitar Lesson QT-013)

In this guitar lesson quick tip video we're going to explore using volume to clean up your sound!!

Taught by Justin Sandercoe.

Full support at the justinguitar web site where you will find hundreds of lessons on a wide range of subjects, and all the scales and chords that you will ever need! There is a great forum too to get help, no matter what the problem.

And it is all totally free, no bull. No sample lessons, no memberships, no free ebook. Just tons of great lessons :)

To get help with this lesson (and for further info and tabs), find the Lesson ID in the video title (like ST-667 or whatever) and then look it up on the Lesson Index page of justinguitar.com

http://www.justinguitar.com

Have fun :)

.

Hi. Howya doin'? Justin here

with another quick tip for you,

and today we are talking about

using volume to clean up your dirty sound.

Now, the volume I'm talking about

isn't the actual volume.

It's the volume control on your guitar.

Now, it's kinda obvious

to think that the volume control on the guitar

controls the volume, right?

It's in the name.

It seems pretty obvious, but

when you are using distortion,

the volume control for the first part

doesn't seem to alter much in the volume department,

but it does alter stuff in the gain department.

So, I'm using here a Suhr Badger 30

with a little bit of gain on the amp

and an Analog Man King of Tone pedal.

and I've got it as a crunchy sound.

(plays)

It's not real heavy, but, you know, heavy enough.

But if i just back that volume off a little bit,

to, like, 6.5 or 7

(plays)

it's a lot cleaner.

Like just that little bit.

(plays)

It's almost the same volume, not quite

but almost the same.

And it's the kinda thing where if you are playing

in a band,

particularly if you have a front-of-house engineer,

it can be a great trick to be just backing

your volume off a little bit for your rhythm guitar

and when it comes time to do the solo

to crank your volume control up

instead of having to run round

and jumping on a load of pedals.

You know,if you're on your own

and you don't have front-of-house there

you probably need some sort of booster

or to use a different pedal.

But it's a really really useful tip

and it's not just about the actual volume thing

It's really about tone.

It's really a lot to do with the tone you are getting.

You know, theres a lot of times when

if you are playing and it sounds

a little bit crunchy,

rather than jumping down and changing your pedal

or your amp setting, you might want to try

backing the volume off a little bit first.

You know, a lot of times

particularly in rock,

people tend to over distort stuff

Like ACDC, the guitar sound is

not very distorted at all.

It's just a really loud amplifier

and you get a lot of this kind of natural disortion

that happens but if you listen to the sound closely,

it's not disorted, it's not gaining

like a - I don't know - a Joe Satriani

heavy rock sound or whatever.

They're completely different.

Now, important here - I've talked about

before about exploring your gear

Different guitars and different amps

and different pedals will all function slightly differently.

So, like, Gibson guitars have got a quite

a different effect when you turn the volume down.

They don't seem to drop as much as quickly

and then it seems to drop off a little more sudden.

And so the Strats kind of work good for this.

Different amplifiers will work different

and different pedals will have a different effect.

depending on what pedals you've got on.

So, this is the kind of thing you need to explore

on your gear.

Like I've said to you, on this Strat

it's like 6.5, 7 is where you get

that kind of nice break off

and its not dirty anymore - it's not as dirty.

It's kind of a bit cleaner

and kind of crunchy sounding

rather than dirty sounding.

But it 's different on all the different guitars

so it's worth exploring on your instrument

and seeing how it effects your sound.

I hope that helps you with your tone journey

I'll see you for lots more lessons very soon.

Take care of yourselves.

Bye Bye