Volume – controls the volume of the signal from guitar to amp.You can tune the guitar without needing a pedal. Tuner – lots of electro-acoustic guitars have built in tuners.

Some of the most common controls on an electro-acoustic guitar are: The most common system works by taking the string vibrations and the sound that is created by them in the body and soundboard of the guitar and converts it into a voltage signal which is sent to the amplifier. The controls depend on the type of acoustic pickup system the guitar has. They also tend to be smaller and more like a control panel with sliders or buttons rather than knobs. What do the Controls do on an Electro Acoustic Guitar do?Įlectro-acoustic guitars usually have their controls on the side of the body rather than the front. It just gives the guitar a lot more variation in the sounds you can get from it. Alternatively you might want the sound that both the bridge and neck pickup together gives, so you flick the switch to the correct position. If you wanted to just have the bridge pickup engaged then you could quickly select this via the selector switch. This gives different options for how the guitar sounds and many tone variations. The pickup selector switch is connected to these multiple pickups and allows the player to choose different combinations of pickups and which of them are on. Many electric guitars have more than one pickup. What Does the Pickup Selector Switch do on a Guitar? If you turn the volume control up the signal increases from the pickups and so you get a louder volume. As you turn the volume down the signal sent via the pickups to the amp is decreased and so the volume is lower. Very simply the volume knob controls the amount of volume the guitar pickups produce. What Does the Volume Knob do on a Guitar? If you’re interested in the anatomy of the guitar then try our guide to the parts of the guitar and what they do. A lot of guitarists rarely use it and just leave it on 10 and then adjust their amp or pedals to shape their tone. However as amps and pedals all have their own controls, quite often with treble controls, then the guitar tone knob is often obsolete. If you turn up the tone knob then the higher frequencies increase and the tone will sound more “trebly”. So if you turn down the tone knob it will lower the treble from the sound your guitar produces making it sound darker.

The tone knob on your guitar either increases or decreases the treble or high frequencies of the pickups. There are many more types of guitars but most will have some variation of the 2, 3 or 4 knob configurations. Similar in style to Ibanez, Jackson guitars also favor a simple 2 knob configuration with the single master volume and tone control. PRS guitars are similar in design to Gibson’s but tend to have a 2 or 3 control configuration. Not all stick to the same configuration but the most common is one volume control and one tone control. Ibanez guitars tend to have fairly simple controls. Again these are isolated controls as opposed to a master control. The 2 controls are for each pickup, so you can individually change the volume and tone of either the bridge or neck pickup independently. Les Paul’s mostly have 2 volume and 2 tone control knobs. Or they have just a single volume and tone control.Īlongside those controls there is the pickup selector switch which looks different to the round knobs. The most well known Fender guitars usually have either one volume control, called a master control, and a tone control knob for both the bridge and neck pickups (these are isolated controllers). Let’s take a look at the most popular guitars and their control setups. The tone control increases or decreases the amount of treble in the signal output from the guitar and the pickup selector switches between the different pickups the guitar has.īut different types of guitars have different configurations of controls. These are all very straightforward: the volume knob controls the level of volume the guitar produces ( duh!). So virtually all electric guitars have a volume and tone control along with a pickup selector switch. The knobs or controls on a guitar affect the tone, sound and volume the guitar produces.

What are the Types of Control Configurations.

Why are the Controls on a Guitar Important.

What do the Controls do on an Electro Acoustic Guitar do?.

What Does the Pickup Selector Switch do on a Guitar?.

What Does the Volume Knob do on a Guitar?.

What Does the Tone Knob do on a Guitar?.

Acoustic guitar tuner knobs