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Tone
,→Pickups
== Pickups ==
Pickups are often an instrumental part of the tone, so be sure to [[Choosing Pickups|choose good ones]] for your guitar. There's no universal answer for what to get - the ideal choice depends on your guitar's tone (generally indicated from the mass and type of wood its made from), your desired tone, and your playing style. Guitar manufacturers often outfit low to midrange guitars with crummy, in-house pickups. But even a somewhat high-end guitar might have poor stock pickups. Aside from being deficient in certain frequencies, poor pickups generally have a very poor signal-to-noise ratio. Its usually the first thing I look to replace in a guitar, as it has a very large impact on tone.
== Guitar Electronics ==
Most people don't pay a lot of attention to this part of the signal chain, but it can have a large bearing on tone. First, let's get the bad stuff out the way. Bad solder joints will lead to a crackly signal. Dusty potentiometers will sound noisy/crackly when turning them. Improper shielding will allow hum and other interference to get picked up and infect your signal. A good electronics cavity sounds quite a bit better than a poor one.
But there are also tonal considerations for the resistance of your potentiometers and capacitance of your tone circuit. Usual values for pots when using passive pickups are 250K, 500K, and 1M. The higher the resistance, the brighter the signal will be. Lower values allow higher frequencies to "escape" to ground. The capactitance value of the capacitor used for your tone knob will determine the range of how much high-end attenuation occurs. Smaller values will be barely noticeable, only slightly dimming the highs; while high values will result in a very dark tone. The most common value is .047μf, or 47nf.
Be very careful when switching from active to passive pickups or vice versa. Actives usually have much different ideal values for pot resistance and capacitor values. Trying to swap just the pickups but keeping the electronics is a recipe for disaster. If you plan to reuse anything, be sure to read its values carefully. Don't confuse a 25K pot for a 250K pot. Don't confuse a .22mf cap for a .022μf cap. The results can cause very odd things to happen. When changing pickups, it's often a good idea to first wire them up connecting one at a time directly to the output jack to get a good idea of what they should sound like.
== Stomps ==