Guitar Volume Knob and Charlie Christian Tone
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- Опубликовано: 22 фев 2015
- Based on the discussion of early electric jazz guitar tones, especially at the Just Jazz Guitar thread linked below, it's been postulated that guys like Charlie Christian, and other early electric jazz guitarists like Oscar Moore, probably had their guitar's volume knob set relatively low, and their amp volume respectively high. I too have found that the guitar's volume knob setting has a definitely impact on the tone. What better way to demonstrate this than to play through some examples at various different volume knob settings. Here's my 1937 ES-150 and 1939 EH-185 amp. Let'er rip.
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Good stuff that applies to all pickups: the relationship between amp, guitar volume knob and guitar tone knob.
I hear a lot more breakup on many of the old guys recordings, Charlie Christian, Tiny Grimes especially, those are my favourite moments of their playing, and i am so grateful that at that time they did not have amplifiers that provide whats considered a jazz guitar tone nowadays (absolutely clean)
Might have been due to the recording technique.
@@lukasschliepkorte3019 That was my chain of thought too, I wonder if they used a ribbon mic and what sort
I love the early breakup in jazz guitar recordings, makes it so alive. Not enough to collapse but so brilliant. It’s why my favorite amp is still the 5e3 tweed deluxe. Old sound, warm, rich and just a little grit
@@davidmazza3898 I like it clean myself, and much prefer something like a tweed Harvard or brownface Princeton for clean tones. A small amount of overdrive to accentuate phrases can be cool, but I dislike when it's overused to the point the entire phrases are busted-up. Leo Fender and Everette Hull at Ampeg hated distortion, kept making bigger amps so they could play louder!
this usage of the vol knob is esential in all electric guitar playing, w used to call it rounding your sound, most moderns dont even know these basics, just pedals!!!! thank you!!!
Jon, thanks a million for this demo. It is so much informative about the original CC sound. By the way I had the opportunity to try 2 different ES 150, one from 1937 and the other from 1938, in the same shop. As you may know, Gibson changed the wiring and wire diameters between these 2 dates. I found the 2 sounds tremendously different. Your ES 150 is the cleanest very seen. Congrats for your playing and for carrying Charlie Christian's flame. Cheers.
Why did I just find this blog. It's great!!
Nice playing and those cool subtle changes, great, thanks!
The information was cool, but I really just dug listening to you channel Charlie!
Plus factor that the pickups and amps were new and the voltage of the day was generally lower. Great observations of how to get the sounds!
Thanks bud!
The effect of cable capacitance is highest with the volume at half way i.e. there will be a little more treble cut there than with the volume knob at either end of its range. With the volume knob low, there is far less chance of overloading the input stage of the amp. Charlie's sound was often a bit distorted in a nice way and I think this would be more likely when he had the volume knob high. Remember amps were very low powered in those days so get the volume he was alleged to play at the guitar volume would have to be high.
This is an excellent example of how adjusting the volume control affects the tone. I aspire to play with the Charle Christian tone and I think that having an ES 150 and an EH 185 are a big help. But those are both expensive and hard to come by. A few years ago on his swing guitar blog Jonathan mentioned a preamp pedal called the "Junior Barnyard" from a company called the Nocturne Brain. I play in a student big band and use a solid state Roland Cube 30 and with the Jr Barnyard turned on I can get a surprisingly good approximation using a Telecaster. When I use my ES 125 with P90's it gets even better. But the volume control is critical. The pedal is supposed to provide a tone like those in vintage amps that had octal tube preamps. (Octal tubes have 8 pin connectors as opposed to more modern tubes that have 9 pins). Curiously when I use the pedal with a 1960's Vibrolux reverb it does not seem to impact the sound as much. My conclusion is that the pedal does a better job of compensating when used with transistor amps. The other thing worth noting is that when the preamp is engaged it increases the sensitivity of the strings and it takes a bit of practice to develop your picking technique to take full advantage of the setup. Again carefully adjusting the volume control is needed to push the point of breakup to exactly where you want it. To my ears Charlie's amp sounds like it is just on the verge of breaking up but I would still classify his sound as being clean.
I've been using my Jr. Barnyard with a Peavey Delta Blues 115, and I like the way it sounds. I have used it with several guitars, mostly hollowbodies.
I have also used it with a Blackstar Debut 50 (a transistor amp), and I didn't like it as well! I preferred the Nocturne Atomic Brain with that amp.
Also, just by the nature of pots when you roll off the volume you roll off a bit of treble so that is part of what you are hearing. Cranking the amp and lowering the guitar volume also gives you more dynamics and headroom. Roll it up and dig in and you get distortion. Great video, slick playing!
Very interesting & great playing to boot.
Very interesting analysis and advices illustrated through a sublime CC's touch playing . Soon I shall
play the SOLO FLIGHT and you give your fellow jazz guitar players your precious experience . I wish
to use one of this vintage ES 150 ( one is "waiting" me and is setted with the P90 ) instead of my
GIBSON Byrdland . I can try various amps ( Ampeg V4 .....Polytone 102 ....or MINI ....or AER .....)
To much choices leads to confusion and your mastery can put some light . NO need to add that the
Main and most difficult thing is the way Charlie played each note ......and delivers high tension lines
all the way . Thanks with my best regards and compliments . You do it wonderfully !
Nice sound and playing and rig. The full on volume pot sounds best to my ears, but then the Christian lines as recorded had to cut through an orchestra or trio. The microphone used in the recording process is also a factor. In any case, great sound and playing on this demo; conveys the essence of Charlie Christian's tone, harmonic, and melodic concept.
Wow I wish i could play this stuff, sounds great
Thanks for sharing your gear and your music with us. I enjoyed your playing.
I've been winding my own pickups using 38 gauge wire, like the early Gibson pickups, and they are definitely different beasts. I've noticed that volume control sensitivity in the top of it's range too. My pickups have a bit of twang until you load them down a
bit, and then they get that nice fat, round tone. I've done a couple of Charlie Christian
types with the blade pole pieces, and one with alnico rod magnets, and I'm totally
hooked on this type of pickup. You get more note definition, faster attack, better
dynamic range and more tonal variation when you pluck the strings in different spots.
It's almost a bit 'dangerous' if you don't have some amp compression, because the
pickups don't mask inconsistencies in your playing. I play fingerstyle, and I would tell
anyone else who does to try out one of the lower resistance 2.3K ohm copies out there; if you can live with a bit of noise they are so much nicer than 'numb'-buckers
or P90s.
The guitar and amp is great the strings don’t they play something into the sound too
Superb, thank you so much!
You have nailed that CC sound honey! Both with the amp/pup and amplification you use..... but a huge amount comes from your playing......a huge factor in the style of anyone and their playing. Great vid and presentation. Your improvisations were the closest to CC that I have heard. Once again nice playing and thanks for posting.
Cool guitar playing!
Great idea for a video. Thanks.
Like that style.
sounds great !
Splendid
I just found this! I have a 1939 Super 400 with the Charlie Christian pickup added. Pickup is from 1952. The earliest pickups are much lower in output as they soon after started winding more wire on the bobbin. It would be nice to know for sure but I'll bet Charlie had both low and high output guitars as he was active over the transition period to the high output pickups.
Great playing! I have the Slaman version of this guitar and love it! I also have a Vintage 47 Amps EH-185G as do you. My questions are: Which input are you using and what is the tone knob on the amp set at. Thanks for your excellent videos, and keep swingin'!
Very very good
Junior Barnard used a volume pedal and had an Epiphone steel guitar pickup installed on his Epiphone Zephyr to get his nasal-twang Western Swing tone like the steel guitar players. Interesting concept: an 'adjust while you play' option.
More or less off topic for what it's worth: I like this Thelonious Monk piece of advice to Steve Lacy: A note can be small as a pin or big as the world, it depends on your imagination.
With reference to Charlie's "warm tone" - a sound that is evident on his Goodman studio recordings - I believe that Charlie's reputation with younger players will rest on his Minton recordings which feature a much brighter and slightly distorted sound.
Now, I'm sure I read somewhere that Charlie was after an amp that would give him that harder, slightly distorted sound. Although I'm not sure what Benny Goodman would have made of it.
wonderful
That 3/4 sound is what I usually go for.
Also very tasty playing!
A friend of mine who is an engineer for solid state chip manufacturing pointed out years ago; if you ran an oscilloscope on it, the pots on a guitar do not gradually decrease the tone, it falls like you would in the Grand Canyon, since then I've made my tone decisions at the amp and run the guitar pots at full, for what it's worth that seems to work better.
Love it. Which song are you playing? Thanks.
Hey man, I would really appreciate if you can share with me which picks do you use, specially the one used in this video. Thank you!
Very informative video Jonathan. Hey, does that 150 have a flat back?
rolling off the potentiometer changes the impedance seen by the pickups. This changes FR.
I wonder if Charlie had to temper his sound when with Benny because when, free from Goodman's band, in the Minton sessions he has a more attacking sound with some distortion.
I've heard that some of the early electric guitarists sometimes poked little holes in their amp speakers to get hints of distortion/gain or "bite" if you will. I wonder if Tiny Grimes and some of those "edgier" pre-rock n' roll progenitors were tinkering with speakers via bespoke speaker jabs. Great demo of your approach to tone and love your playing.
This sounds apocryphal to me. Jazz musicians were probably more concerned with keeping the amp they spent 6 months pay on in tip top shape.
Solid, Jackson! I must needs procure a Charlie Christian pickup for Nancy, my Telecaster. I'm wondering what kind of strings are used here - flat wounds? Much thanks, sir.
..yes,..flatwounds cant be beat.🎸🖤
The thing I love the most about my Lollar CC pickup is how "plucky" it is at low to mid volume. I haven't found anything that compares to it.
..love for Lollar.👍🎸💘
Enjoyed your style playing great, is that an old E l150 Gibson amp??? Boy it's got a great sound!!.
Thanks for this video, you absolutely nailed Christian's iconic sound. Do you think that i can achieve good results with one of the later Gibson es150 with P90 of the fifties? Thanks
The more things that are different, the harder it is. But, the most important thing is actually the vocabulary... the notes and phrases being in the style are often more "convincing" than the tone itself. If you were to play some seriously Charlie-style licks and phrasing on later 150, it would probably still work. If you check my Instagram, there's a video of me playing "Gone with What Wind" on a borrowed modern D'Angelico, strung with flatwounds (which is NOT what charlie would've used), and played into a backline Fender Blues Deluxe without the 150-style preamp pedal I use... and you know what, it sounds pretty right on nonetheless.
My guess is Charlie’s Sound on recordings only hinted at his actual tone live in person. He seemed to (like every guitarist after him) be pretty loud when he soloed. So who knows how hard he was hitting the level needles on the recorder? Guitar as a lead instrument certainly had no recording protocol at that time, so I would think we are hearing some tape saturation. Likely his sound was huge in the room with frequencies not being fully represented on recordings. If you think of the drums or Piano on those recordings we know we are missing a lot of the sound of those instruments. Still you can only chase the recorded tone and it’s cool to hear the genuine gear and a cat that knows the style so well.
There is no tape saturation on Charlie Christian recordings. Magnetic tape was not used in US studios until the late 1940s, after CC had died.
Is this in reference to his studio recordings or live air checks? If you compare, his tone is noticeably different between the two.
its actually the phenomenon of intermodulation distortion with the double stops
Where did Charlie get all of his volume? I suppose he had a large amplifier.
Great video! Wondering where you think he would have gone for rhythm playing? I'm thinking a quarter? This video has made me think of thinking of the guitar going into the amp, the same way you plug a microphone into a P.A. Of course you never run the gain on a microphone into p.a on full, you generally get most of the sound from the speaker and you adjust the gain and volume accordingly to the room. I hope that made sense
.
So, is it only possible to have that kind of sweet, warm, mellow Christianian tone with an ES-150 and an EH-300? (Because I have an Firefly JSN, which is like an ES-335 knockoff, and one of those Orange amplifiers, and I feel like my equipment is too "new" and transistorized to ever correctly and closely capture and reproduce that sweet and ever-elusive 1930's & 1940's tone! :( )
Well, I subscribe to the theory that the "tone is in the hands" mostly applies to the vocabulary of what you play. So, if you played authentic Charlie Christian stuff with all of the appropriate articulations and phrasing, then you could probably tweak your setup with an EQ pedal to get rather close.
Here's a great video where it shows that the vocabulary and playing are more important than the gear: ruclips.net/video/D1hYbd3ebPQ/видео.html
All that said, there's an inherent sound to the authentic gear, and it makes it that much easier to do it right. A facebook friend of mine has a modern replica Slaman ES-150, and even though he doesn't play anything like Charlie Christian, he posted a clip to facebook recently, and I could totally hear how the tone of his guitar is dead on compared to my 1937 ES-150. It's all balance and what you can afford and what you prioritize.
Just to summarize... The volume settings, from low to high, are calibrated to the inebriation level of the audience. Correct?
..correct.
What setting was the guitar's TONE knob set at, though?
All the way up
@@jonathanstout6618 Thank you for that answer. Now, I have a follow-up question: What should the volume and tone settings on the AMPLIFIER be?
@@thisbandreallystix - well that depends on the room, and the band. On my EH-185, I typically have the volume at 7-8 on the instrument channel (which is the normal one, unlike the higher gain microphone channel), and the bass and treble knobs set "flat" at 5 aka 12 o'clock. If I'm using my Vintage '47 VA-185G, the volume is usually between 12 o'clock and 2 o'clock (any higher and the amp breaks up too much), and the tone is typically between 9 o'clock and 12 o'clock.
Kinda late commenting...bandstand volume back in the day was set around upright bass and piano. No pa systems often. Just my 2 cents.......
can I add a pickup to,my acoustic guitar and get a jazz,box sound
Absolutely
I still have never seen a photo of Charlie Christian using a pick
Barney Kessell - the great jazz guitarist - spent time with Charlie and studied his style close up. Charlie definitely used a plectrum on his recordings.
At 1/4. Its a Barney Kessel sound
Barney Kessel said CC was a LOUD guitar player. If you are finding Thelonious's advice (see my other comment) hard to put into practice, here's sensible advice from a true guitar legend which is straightforward and definitely on-topic: "...what good are people who do that jazzy sort of stuff. It's all too low volume...If you're a good player you play loud so people can hear it -- that's why we plug these things in. If you play an electric guitar -- I don't care if it's a Gibson 175 or a Charlie Christian -- turn the f***ing thing up." ~ Nigel Tufnel.
I believe CC would agree. And anyway, when the rubber hits the road -- at the gig -- that's what we all do!
Please talk about strings!
What do you use?
Dr Tomastic hand made from vienna the best flatwound.
I achieved a 53 es150 , years ago it was stolen. And now i found a ;46 wow. this is a great guitar
Full open sounds like Junior Bernard
My hearing must be going. I can't tell much difference between a quarter turn and 1/2 and 3/4 turn.
Arkansas Red it's pretty apparent to me
Certain hearing loss occurs when there are low sounds. That's probably it. I have a friend who you have to speak to in a high voice because he can't here low voices or tones.
its also changing not like he's describing
Coudent he have also just rolled the tone knob down, i know when im going for jazzy sounds i do neck pickup, than role town down to somwhere in the rhelm of 3 or 5
Unfortunately, I didn't demonstrate it here, but the "tone" knob on this model is pretty ineffective. It basically doesn't do much until the end of the sweep and then it goes immediately to mud.
LOL I thought its Leo Fender
Tiny Grimes is Alittle Dirty.
Uhm