How do I use a guitar?
I am wondering how to use the pickup selector and tone knobs on my electric guitar. It's an epiphone SG standard..there are 4 knobs on it and a 3-way selector. The knobs arent named so I dont know which is which and I'm not sure how to use the pickup switch to get a certain sound? Also, how many and what type of pickups are on this guitar? Ive heard certain terms like "humbucker" and "single coil" thrown around but dont know what they mean. Any help describing the pickup switch, the pickups and the knobs and how to accuretly use each of them is highly appreciated! Thank you!
Update:thanks gtarczar! perfect info.
Comments
The Knobs consist of Tone and Volume. The tone knob allows you to shape the EQ of the guitar signal as it leaves the pickups. Lower tone settings will result in a muddier sounding signal, Higher tones will be crisp and ideal for clean playing.
When the pick up switch is in the left position the sound is mostly put in the the left pick up,and vice versa.When it is in the middle it goes to both evenly.
A humbucker pick-up : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humbucker
A single-coil pick up : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_coil
Yeah, the first answer is slightly wrong. The pickup selector allows you to use the bridge pickup (closest to the bridge) or neck pickup (closest to the neck) or both together. The 4 knobs are the volume and tone for each pickup.
As far as accurately using them, you just mess around with them until you get the sound you want. Try different settings and see for yourself how they affect the sound and figure out what you like.
In simplest terms, a single coil pickup is generally narrower and has a single coil of wire around the magnets. They produce a brighter, cleaner tone but also produce more hum and don't sound as good distorted. A humbucker has 2 coils that cancel out the hum, but you sacrifice some of that brightness. Usually metal players will use humbuckers because they produce better distortion and a deeper tone, while country, blues, and classic rock might use single coils (like on a Fender Stratocaster). You SG will have 2 humbucker pickups on it and no single coil pickups. Some guitars come with an HSS or HSH configuration where they have a combination of humbucker and single coil pickups for more tonal options. Some, called hybrids, also have piezo elements in the bridge so you can get an almost acoustic guitar sound from them as well.
Rory is incorrect.
An SG style guitar has 2 pickups. The one closest to the bridge is the lead pickup as designated by the plate around the switch. The one closest to the neck is designated as the rhythm pickup. Not all SGs have the round plate for the switch, but most do, and virtually all Les Paul style guitars do. The SG and the Les Paul use the same pickup and switch configuration.
The 4 knobs are volume and tone controls for each pickup. The knob closest to the bridge is the volume control for the bridge pickup. The knob directly behind it is the tone control for the bridge pickup. The 2 lower knobs are volume and tone for the neck pickup respectively. (volume in front, tone behind it). Most people will leave the volume and tone controls all the way up and simply use the switch to select between the brighter sounding bridge pickup or the darker sounding neck pickup. Using both will give you an "in-between" sound.
The 3 position switch allows you to select either pickup or both when switched to the middle position. The down position is the lead pickup, the up position is the rhythm pickup. (It should be noted that these designations are simply recommendations, and that plenty of guitarists use the bridge pickup for bright, aggressive rhythm sounds and the neck pickup for dark, smoky lead sounds)
A single coil pickup is the type used on Fender guitars (the "skinny" pickups!) These type of pickups are prone to giving off a slight 60cycle (hz) hum when played at higher volumes or with a lot of distortion. By using two single coil pickups together, with one running into the other, it was noticed that the hum was canceled out. Thus, the term hum-"bucking" was born. These larger pickups are actually 2 single coil pickups placed side by side with extra windings around both bobbins to not only "buck" the hum, but give a stronger output to the pickup. Since humbucking pickups have more power and less noise they are perfect for all types of rock music that use loud volumes and distortion.
To review: the knobs are volume and tone for each pickup and the switch selects between either pickup or both when in the middle position.
Edit: Sorry for the inacurracy of this answer, I still hope it'll give you an idea.
***** of those are tone (for each pickup) and the other is volume, most people just leave them up fully and control with their amp.
The pickup selector changes the sound, putting it simply,
When fully up it is using the neck pickup (closest to the fret board) the middle selector is the middle pickup and the pickup pointed toward the bridge is bridge pickup.<---In a Fender Strat
Experiment with the tones you get from each one.
The volume knob is pretty simple, you can just turn the volume up or down. The two town knobs give you're guitar more texture/guess what....more tone, I like mine all the way up.
The main thing is to experiment with them and find a sound you like.
Try the tone knobs up fully and the pickup in bridge position (pointed away from you)...Just a sound I like.
The first pickups created were single coils. Along with picking up signals from your strings, which they were supposed to, they also picked up stray radio frequencies (RF) which you would hear through your amp as an annoying buzzing sound. The orientation of this RF signal is related to which way the wire is wound around your pickup. Meaning that if you wind the pickup clockwise, the RF signal will travel in a different way then it would if you wound the pickup counter-clockwise. If you have 2 signals being used at once, where the RF signal is different in each, they will cancel each other out, or at least lessen their collective sound greatly.
This is why humbuckers were created.
Humbuckers are essentially 2 single coil pickups that share a large magnet at their base. Each coil of a humbucker is wrapped differently, so that the RF signals they create cancel each other out.
The only purpose in creating humbuckers was to "buck" the hum that single coils created.
However humbuckers did not, and do not, sound just like single coils without hum. Since a much larger magnet was used, and there were 2 coils of wire, the humbucker created a much louder signal.
All good but the controls. Four controls are 2 volume and two tone. One set for each pickup.