Quack point and tones

[SteveOL]

G'day all,

I have had my ES-335 for about a month now and I really do love it. So versatile and beautiful to play.

Anyhoo, I've been reading about the middle pick-up setting where you can roll the neck volume back a touch to hit what "they" refer to as the "quack point". "This delivers vocal and expressive lead tones for solos and also provides a fuller alternative to bridge-pickup rhythm tones in a band mix."

The link below is me butchering the acoustic version of Clapton's Layla. I had it in the middle setting with the volume at 5 on both pickups, tone at 10 for maximum treble on both. But honestly, I don't have much of a clue about settings.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wu2ym6v6uy1qsq9/Layla Acoustic - 28:1:2022.mp3?dl=0

I was watching a bloke on YouTube who described settings he used thus:

Neck pick-up
2 vol/10 tone bright
2/7 round
2/0 Clapton "woman" tone

Middle
Both 5/10
More neck = more bass
More bridge = more treble

Bridge
Rock on
Roll tone off for rhythm

Anyway. I was wondering if anyone had suggestions or a list of settings I could play with and find those tones? I do enjoy using Tonebridge where it suggests what pick-ups to use but I do find that they are aimed at less versatile guitars? Or maybe that's wrong. As I say, I don't know too much.

Loe your thoughts.

Steve

 

[BGood]

You first have to balance pickup heights. Neck usually ends up at the plastic ring level.

 

[Noodling Guitars]

For those tones you mentioned, those assume you're driving your amp into break-up. If he's using volume at 2 for woman tone, I suspect he's on a crunch channel with distortion fairly high up (the bridge setting gives it away). What amp do you have? If it has anything like a Marshall/Crunch channel, I'd start with everything at noon and work from there with those suggested settings, then you can adjust both your amp and your guitar volume/tone to your liking.

 

[SteveOL]

For those tones you mentioned, those assume you're driving your amp into break-up. If he's using volume at 2 for woman tone, I suspect he's on a crunch channel with distortion fairly high up (the bridge setting gives it away). What amp do you have? If it has anything like a Marshall/Crunch channel, I'd start with everything at noon and work from there with those suggested settings, then you can adjust both your amp and your guitar volume/tone to your liking.

I just have a little Samick amp. But play a lot into my computer using Tonebridge and headphones.

 

[Noodling Guitars]

I just have a little Samick amp. But play a lot into my computer using Tonebridge and headphones.

I'm not familiar with Tonebridge, and only googled it now, but it seems very versatile and you should be able to dial in a pretty good crunch tone there as the base, and then try those settings above.

By crunch setting, I mean when your volume/tone is at 10, it should sound similar to any of those vintage Les Paul demos that Chicago Music Exchange or Emerald City Guitars does for those 5 figured guitars (they all sound similar anyway).

Something like this:


Once you get that as your foundation, then play around with the knobs and it should get you within the ballpark of those descriptions

 

[SteveOL]

I'm not familiar with Tonebridge, and only googled it now, but it seems very versatile and you should be able to dial in a pretty good crunch tone there as the base, and then try those settings above.

By crunch setting, I mean when your volume/tone is at 10, it should sound similar to any of those vintage Les Paul demos that Chicago Music Exchange or Emerald City Guitars does for those 5 figured guitars (they all sound similar anyway).

Something like this:


Once you get that as your foundation, then play around with the knobs and it should get you within the ballpark of those descriptions

Thank you very much for that. I appreciate it.

Tonebridge is amazing. And free. Do yourself a favour and check it out. You can even use clean tone settings in Tonebridge and have a distortion pedal in there and stand on that when you need to. eg. Lithium by Nirvana. There's 1000s of songs in the catalogue.