Tone Discriptors

[Billy Bones]

I'm thinking of something a little more basic. When we say something sounds "dark," or "smooth," or "creamy" these are words that the rest of the world uses to apply to amount of light, physical texture, and taste. I would like to know which frequencies they relate to and how they relate to them. I would like to be able to walk up to a sound board or an amp knowing that "this sounds too boomy, so I need to x,y,z.". I instinctively understand some things about sound and tone, but I can't communicate them or grow my understanding because the language is so "soft."

[Possum]

....

Something everyone overlooks is the wiring harness. Virtually all wiring harnesses in factory made guitars are substandard and can be vastly improved on. Any offshore guitar should be gutted or you'll never get the best out of any pickups you put in them. You can send your best pickups to someone with anything Epiphone makes and maybe hear back your pickups didn't help.

[Billy Bones]

That's interesting Possum. I hadn't thought that through too much. Can you tell me what you're not into with the overseas harnesses? Is it the quality of components or the way they're put together?

[ken]

Actually Billy, I can speak for experience when I say Possum is right on here.

The parts quality is not only astoundingly bad, the coax wire used everywhere in Epis is the same extremely skinny wire used in VCR's. The wire's extremely high capacitance rolls off enormous amounts of treble so no matter what you put in for pickups you still have mud.

I suggest rewiring Epis with a good quality coax wire, new pots, tone caps, and a new jack too. For some reason, the pickup selector switches in all my Epis were the same ones Gib sold so I keep those.

just my 2c

ken

[Billy Bones]

Thanks Ken,

So, skinny wire has high capacitance and rolls off treble? Can anyone provide more info? Very interested. I love when I find out new information about something I had taken for granted. I have assumed that frail little wire was a bad idea as it wouldn't last as long, but I didn't know that it would muddy up the tone.

Billy

[Possum]

....

Yes the skinny PLASTIC COATED wire, probably because of the plastic kills treble. Also the pots are usually just deadly bad. Just replacing the pots will improve the transparency of the harness. I got a Jay turser 3 P90 archtop and it had about ten feet of wire in it, I kid you not. Epiphone uses real cheap computer type connectors so they don't have to solder the pickups in assembly, all horrible shit, rip it out and completely start over. Even on some higher end guitars like Gibson Les Pauls you sometimes find plastic coated wire and the fake bumblebee caps. When I sell a set of my PAFs I usually warn them up front the may need to completely redo their wiring harnesses, plus they need to be wired 50's style as well. A guitar's wiring harness is almost like a musical device in its own right. I didn't use to believe this until I got that Jay Turser. I made some P90s for it and they all sounded deadly dull no matter what I did, so a friend suggested I replace the pots, just doing that woke the guitar up. I never got around to replacing the wiring though and its still in bad need of that, but I never play it anyway :-)

[Billy Bones]

I want to know why those things kill treble. What would it be about a plastic coating? I don't know anything about that. And a pot that is wide open, do you mean that it isn't really wide open? Have you run into the Alpha brand pots? Anybody feel good or bad about the full sized versions of them?

[Steve Conner]

I'm thinking of something a little more basic. When we say something sounds "dark," or "smooth," or "creamy" these are words that the rest of the world uses to apply to amount of light, physical texture, and taste. I would like to know which frequencies they relate to and how they relate to them. I would like to be able to walk up to a sound board or an amp knowing that "this sounds too boomy, so I need to x,y,z.". I instinctively understand some things about sound and tone, but I can't communicate them or grow my understanding because the language is so "soft."

That's a really interesting question, but what you're asking may be impossible, because we don't have proof that different people mean the same thing when they use a certain tone word. Everyone's hearing and perception of sound is unique to some extent, and every good musician or engineer I've known seemed to have his own personal way of thinking about tone colours and timbres.

I remember one guy I played guitar for, who asked me if I could make my guitar sound more "tubular" for one song. I told him I had no idea what he meant! I never did figure out what a tubular tone was like.

Dark, smooth and creamy to me all say a lack of treble and upper midrange.

Boomy means too much bass in the 60-150Hz region, so if you thought a sound was too boomy, you'd use some sort of EQ to reduce that frequency range. One thing I found very interesting was to play with a parametric or graphic EQ on your guitar, or recorded music, and get a feel for how your subjective impression of the tone is affected by changes to various frequency bands.

Wet means "With reverb" and dry means without reverb.

My favourite dumb tone word is "tight", it can mean almost anything, and therefore ends up meaning nothing. "Fat" and "Warm" are almost as meaningless. To me "tight" means a bass response that's perfectly right, so it goes deep but doesn't boom, but I try not to use the word: I'll say "good bass" instead.

I'm not a pickup maker so can't really comment in that area, except to say that I don't believe the wiring harness makes a difference. Surely the guitar cord has more capacitance than the harness could ever have. And surely pots are pots, except for the ones in my old Peavey bass that crackle when turned.

[David Schwab]

Have you run into the Alpha brand pots? Anybody feel good or bad about the full sized versions of them?

Alpha pots are OK. I have some that have been in guitars for 40 years, and they still work fine. And those were the Alpha pots from RadioShack!

I have some of the Alpha pots from Stew-Mac in a few instruments as well.

[ShannonH]

Sensory descriptors

My wife actually does this for a living, but for foods. Usually you have to have some baseline values that everyone can agree upon, like saltines are a 2 in soda flavor on a scale of 1 - 15. That sets an understanding. It takes some training and a willingness to forgo some preconceptions about how you perceive things.

[LtKojak]

I don't believe the wiring harness makes a difference. Surely the guitar cord has more capacitance than the harness could ever have.

I hear you, Steve. I didn't wanna believe it either, until I did for a customer, it was an Epi '58 Korina Explorer. The difference was so big it wasn't even funny... then I did it on a '73 Gibson LP De Luxe... same outcome.

I've beeen offering this as part of my "De Luxe Setup" for some time now and I can tell you, it had worked for me every single time.

You should try it... maybe you can learn a thing or two in the process, and you don't have nothing to lose.

HTH,

[Steve Conner]

Does the Explorer have a long run of coax between the pots and the pickup selector switch? If that was 1ft, and it was three times worse than guitar cable, then it would be like adding another 3ft on your guitar cord.

I've seen mini-dictionaries that try to explain what the tone words mean. I think Olson's "Music, Physics and Engineering" has one in it, and there's another in RDH4.

I guess "mud" caused by too much cable capacitance, or an overwound pickup, is another tone word.

[ken]

I think what we need is a 'tonemeister's dictionary', sort of like Cab Calloway's
'hepster's dictionary' from the 1930's.

I'm still working on something a prospective customer told me once, he said his
middle pickup was 'tubbly'. I think he was watching too many Winnie The Pooh
cartoons in his spare time myself.

ken

[Possum]

...

I believe the dielectric of the plastic coating is what makes that wire kill treble, maybe. Alpha pots are ok but I had one go bad on me last week, took it complatelely apart and didn't see anything wrong with it, but it was suddenly adding its 450K value on top of the value of the pickup when read out the jack, I replaced it and everything was fine. The Alpha mini pots I've replaced in Epis should be replaced. I always though mini-pots were terrible maybe because in modern times they use crap ones to save money, but in the new Les Paul Handbook they show and old gold top P90 and it had smaller pots back then. Pots aren't expensive, Alphas are OK but CTS are better and will last way longer probably.

[otto pärt]

It is, of course, impossible to precisely quantify these "tone descriptors." Nevertheless, it would be a very interesting project for some group of smart people to take a list of descriptors and associate with each one a few canonical examples. A ToneWiki.