Dylan McKerchie

Keys to Tone part 3... Nuts After talking about Neck relief HERE, and string height HERE, the next section of our series on guitar setup is the nut. This may be the most important thing. The Nut When we discussed the role of sound waves in an electric guitar, we determined that the nut was a key factor in our tone. How the nut is cut and the material  that is is made of can have a HUGE effect on the tone. Less expensive plastic nuts can sound dull and wear quickly. Tusq and other synthetics are more "slick" and...

Keys to Tone Part 2... String Height In part one of our series on Setup found HERE, we talked about setting neck relief. The next step especially on a guitar that just needs a little tweaking, is string height. There are few different methods and tools that are used to do this, but the basic idea is to adjust the saddle height at the bridge to be as low as reasonably possible to give you the desired playing feel. One important factor in this is matching the string height of each string to the radius of the fret board. This...

Setup!!!! Why is setup the second most important part of your tone? The first is practice... your hands. No matter what guitar, effects, or amp you have.... No matter how much money you spend on boutique gear, if your setup is bad, it can ruin the entire experience. You may always fight to get the ideas in your head to come out through your amp. Conversely, even low priced "budget" guitars can sound and play great in the right hands.... if they are set up well. We will spend a few days on the basics of setup. Truss Rod Adjustment......

No load tone Pots.... No load tone pots are another product or buzzword we often see in internet forums and chat pages. What do they actually do? The basic idea of a no load tone pot is that when the pot is turned all the way up to 10 (11 if you are Nigel), there is a bypass of the tone circuit completely. Usually this is accomplished by cutting the trace that is responsible for setting the variable resistance of the pot right at the end (where it corresponds to 10 on the Knob) This can be done by modifying...

Cloth Covered Wire Vs PVC This is an age old argument, but does it really make a noticeable difference in your tone? Why Do we see cloth used in guitars? In the late 40's and early 50's, when electric guitars were in their infancy, cloth wire was the common wire in use. In fact, it wasn't just in guitars.... it was in everything. PVC was mostly being used at the end of World War 2 in navy applications, because the commonly used cloth was not waterproof. It was not common to see it in consumer electronics for quite some time...