Why doesn't the tone control work for the bridge-only pickup selection on a Stratocaster?

On the majority of Stratocaster guitars whether made by Fender or by Squier, when you select the bridge pickup alone, neither of the tone controls affect the sound. The bridge pickup is "always on 10" no matter what you do with either tone knob. However the tone controls do work for the other four switch positions.

Does this mean your Stratocaster guitar is defective?

No.

It was designed that way by Mr. Fender himself, as in Leo Fender, the guy whom Fender guitars are named after.

What Leo wanted with the Stratocaster is a pickup position that sounded similar to a steel guitar; something that really, really stood out with a somewhat piercing and shrill sound (typical for pedal steel guitars of the time). Thus, the bridge pickup selection has no tone control wired to it whatsoever.

Do all Strats have no tone control for the bridge-alone selection?

No. There have been several models of Stratocasters over the years that do in fact use the Tone 2 knob (the one near the bottom of the guitar) to affect the bridge-only pickup selection. For example, several American Strats in the 1990s featured what were called TBX tone controls, and many that were delivered with TBX (if not all of them) did have tone control for the bridge-only pickup setting.

Do you need TBX for bridge-alone tone control? No. All it takes to get tone control on the bridge-alone setting it to solder a very small wire between two terminals.

On a Stratocaster 5-way switch, there are four terminals on top and four on the bottom. One side of the switch is wired to connect the pickups. The other side connects your master volume and two tone controls. Simply solder a little wire between the Tone 2 terminal and that open terminal, and ta-da, you've got tone control for the bridge-alone pickup selection.

If all of this sounds too scary to do on your own, every good guitar tech knows how to do this ridiculously simple modification. In other words, yes you can afford to pay a tech to do this because it hardly takes any time or effort to do.

sweet freedom

There are some songs from certain time periods that say a ton of about a decade. Sweet Freedom by Michael McDonald is one of them.

This song is from the soundtrack to the movie Running Scared from 1986, of which the soundtrack can be acquired separately. This song is also Michael McDonald's last top 10 hit he ever penned.

The video for this song is from a bygone era where video production could be silly and still work. The video features McDonald himself and Blily Crystal and Gregory Hines from the movie. This was considered a big deal because the video had to be shot completely outside of the film. The actors probably agreed to be in the video without being paid, because back then music videos were still very new (only 5 years old) and people at the time thought they were nothing but a fad that would die out quickly. They obviously didn't.

When I recently rediscovered this song, I COULD NOT STOP LISTENING TO IT. I literally listened to the song at least 5 or 10 times in a row because it's just so frickin' catchy. I mean, yeah, it's very electronic in its sound, but what a sound it is. There's just something about it that hooks you right in and keeps you there.

The funny part is that Sweet Freedom sounds like a ton of other songs that were around at the time. I'm not sure of the synth that was used (probably a Korg?), but there were a lot of similar-sounding songs on the charts - especially in movie soundtracks.

I was 11 years old in 1986, and I remember when this song hit the charts and seemed to just stay there forever. The song sticks in my mind just that much.

Another funny thing is that I've never seen Running Scared.

Yeah, I'm going to watch it just because of Sweet Freedom. :)

Computerized guitars (and whether they're worth buying or not)

The vast majority of solid-body electric guitars today are pretty much manufactured the exact same way they were 60 years ago. Planks of wood make up the body and neck, and simple passive (meaning non-"active") electronics are used for pickup selection, the pickups themselves, volume control, tone control and output jack.

While true the countries of origin where the guitars and their electronics are made have changed, the formula for how an electric guitar is put together has not.

The only thing that's really changed when comparing guitars then to now are the materials.

A few examples:

Guitar nuts from years ago were almost exclusively made from real bone (as in cow bone), while today they are almost exclusively synthetic bone (Fender's synthetic nut material is called Cyclovac).

Before advances in plastics came along, many guitar manufacturers used a material called bakelite (pronounced "bay-kuh-lite"). Fender used this material on their early pick guards (which you can still get new if you really want it) and control knobs. Early Fender amplifiers also used bakelite knobs. Gibson also used bakelite for their pick guards, sometimes the pickup rings, etc. Basically speaking, anything that was plastic on the guitar was bakelite in the early days. And no, you don't want bakelite because it's just not that sturdy compared to modern plastics.

Finish materials have changed quite a bit over the decades. Most guitars now use a proper polyurethane coating to keep the body paint shiny. I say "proper" because finish coatings really didn't start getting good until the 1990s. In the 1980s and earlier, urethane coated guitars would dull right out in a short period of time (a shine would last 5 years at best with any regular guitar use). Nitrocellulose lacquers aren't used that much because like the guitars made from years ago, that lacquer will crack, pit and chip. Some players like that for the retro look a guitar can get over time, but in all honesty you're not going to get that "well worn" look unless you play the guitar hard and often. You're better off with a modern polyurethane coating, trust me on that one. And no, the nitro lacquer does absolutely nothing for tone no matter what anyone says, nor does it let the guitar "breathe" because the wood is dead. Nothing dead can breathe. Ever. Nitro lacquer finishes do not promote better string vibration and do not affect a single-coil or humbucker pickup's sound in any way. What a nitro finish does do is crack, chip and look like crap after a few years. That's what you get with nitro and nothing else.

The computerized guitar

Guitar makers have tried over the years to modernize the solid-body electric guitar. Several models (some of which are for sale right now) exist, but the problem with the computerized guitar has always been the same:

Nobody really wants one.

What counts as a "computerized guitar"?

It is an electric guitar that:

1. Has some form of computerized control on it somewhere, such as motorized tuners.
2. Has the ability to connect to a computerized device (MIDI, USB or both).
3. All of the above.

Here are three guitars (one from Fender and two from Gibson). I'll first show them to you, and then tell you why I think they suck. Click any link below to see the current price for one.

Fender VG Stratocaster

This is the most computer-enhanced "Fender approved" Stratocaster you can buy. There is a circuit board sitting inside this Strat, and the Roland "enhancements" basically give you any type of sound you were ever looking for.

Epiphone Les Paul Ultra

The computerization here comes in the respect this Les Paul has a USB port when you can connect the guitar to compatible software on your computer.

Gibson Firebird X

The Firebird X (which is pronounced as "Firebird Ten" as the X is the Roman numeral 10) is without question the most computerized electric guitar on the market right now. The only way I can describe it is by saying it has everything. And I mean everything.

The GOOD stuff about computerized guitars

Well, I'll first begin with the GOOD about computerized guitars.

They are priced fairly

Given the amounts of tech that are stuffed into these things, the prices are actually quite reasonable.

They do the job they were designed to do

A computerized guitar does deliver on all its promises. There's no hype involved with these things at all. You do truly get a technologically advanced instrument that can do far more compared to its non-computerized predecessor.

They play like guitars should play

Care was taken to make sure a computerized guitar at its core is still a guitar. Pick one up and play it, and it's basically no different than a non-computerized solid-body electric. And yes, that's a good thing.

The BAD stuff about computerized guitars

Machines and computers just don't mix when it comes to guitars

An electric guitar is a machine that by nature is a very physical instrument. This isn't like a synthesizer where it just sits there and you play it. With a guitar, you sit down with it, you stand up with it, you move around while playing, and so on.

That being said, computerized guitars by nature are pretty much meant for studio use only. Bring one on stage and you're asking for a very expensive accident to happen.

The tones out of most computerized guitars are digital character and not player character

The sound you hear is what the computer in the guitar (if produced by the computer) "thinks" a guitar is supposed to sound like. For most players this is a huge turn-off because what makes a guitar tone is the natural properties of the pickups and not a circuit board.

Players more often than not prefer digital tone to come from anything but the guitar (such as digital effects pedals) because they can exert more control over it. Furthermore, if the digital tone doesn't agree with the player, he can simply remove it.

Most players consider computerized guitars "not real instruments"

Even though a computerized guitar is a real instrument in every sense of the term, players get turned off from them because they feel guitars should all be 100% manually operated things.

Do I personally agree with this? Yes, I do. I feel that you can express yourself better as a player with a non-computerized solid-body electric. I also feel that it makes you a better player overall. All electric guitars have their quirks, but that's part of the fun of playing. If you have a computer do everything for you, well, that's just no fun at all.

Is it wrong for a musician or band to have no Facebook page?

I've been on the internet a long time. A really long time. Heck, some of you reading this probably weren't even born when I first started using internet in 1996. No, I'm not saying that to brag (because it's really nothing to brag about), but I am saying I've seen a lot of things come and go over my 16 years of using internet.

Let's back up to the middle of the 2000s for a moment and concentrate on 2005. This was when MySpace was huge in popularity. Everyone was using it. Nobody had really ever experienced "social media" before, so it was a totally new and exciting thing.

A ton of musicians and bands used MySpace pages as their primary web destination. What I mean by that is musicians and bands thought it was a really good idea to only use MySpace as the place where fans could see what the band was doing, see when their next shows were, post comments on the page, and so on.

For a while, this actually worked, but then something happened.

MySpace lost popularity. Big time.

It all happened in the scope of one year, 2008. That was the year Facebook knocked MySpace out of the top spot as the #1 social media destination, remained there ever since, and MySpace never got its popularity back. And it probably never will.

What did bands do? Here's the funny part - nothing. They continued to use MySpace all the way until around 2010. Some of them migrated over to ReverbNation (a seriously crappy site no band should ever use), and then slowly.. ever so slowly.. moved over to Facebook, got a fan page and established their new social web presence there.

And here we are in 2012. Facebook, even though still the #1 social web destination, is losing a lot of ground with the masses. Many have closed their accounts, never to return. And since the "Timeline" thing that Facebook launched back in March, many musicians and bands lost a ton of traffic from that. Many bands have said - rightfully so - that Timeline killed most if not all their Facebook traffic, and they were right, because it did.

The mistake a lot of musicians and bands make on the internet is...

...using social media as their primary web presence. BAD IDEA.

Bands in the mid-2000s honestly believed (as did a lot of other people) that MySpace was going to be the #1 social place on the internet forever, and that you couldn't possibly go wrong by having your band's only web presence there.

Well, all those people were wrong, obviously.

And they'll all be wrong again when people really start abandoning Facebook (which is closer to happening than you think).

All the bands will say the exact same thing about Facebook when it dies that they said about MySpace in 2008: "I PUT ALL THIS WORK INTO THIS PAGE FOR NOTHING!"

You watch. It will happen.

Is it wrong for a band not to have a Facebook fan page?

No, it's not wrong at all to be "Facebook-less".

The only two types of sites that truly survive no matter what happens are free blogs and self-hosted blogs.

If you have no money, you use a free blog like Blogger, LiveJournal or Xanga. (Update: WordPress is also a good choice and they do have a free option.) All three of those sites have been around since the late 1990s. Yes, really. They have longevity and staying power. Social media does not and never did.

A self-hosted blog is one like you're reading right now. No, it's not free and never has been, and yes it's a very nerdy/geeky thing where you have to know how to write/modify code and crap like that. It doesn't matter if your site is a dot-com, dot-net, dot-org or dot-whatever. Google will find it. And yes, you want Google to find it because you want people to know you or your band exists.

Google, generally speaking, prefers blogs over social media because it has more to index and can do it a lot easier compared to the 2,000-ton piece of crap known as Facebook.

If you don't have a blog for yourself or your band now, GET ONE

You might as well start preparing for Facebook's demise, because it's already well underway.

Whether you're a serious musician/band or just do it for fun, get a blog and start writing to it regularly. It doesn't matter what you put there (it can even be totally stupid stuff); the point is to just get a blog and start writing stuff.

Have a blog if for no other reason than for Google to be able to find you or your band in more than one place on the internet. Don't think about it. Just get one and start using it. You can link out from your blog to all the other places where you do band stuff like SoundCloud for audio, YouTube for video or whatever. Centralize everything around your blog. Make that your starting point for all your public internet music or band-related stuff.

I'll put it to you this way: I have several regular readers who find me by typing my name in a Google search and then come here. And I'm totally okay with that. Believe me when I say that you would want the same thing for yourself or your band, because when Facebook dies out (which it will), your fans will go to Google to find you. And if you don't have a blog, you might as well be invisible at that point.

Full Stack vs. Half Stack vs. Combo Amplifier

Sometimes it can be confusing which powered amplifier setup to go with, because you're not sure which one will be able to do the job right.

The Full Stack: Marshall JCM800 2203X, 1960A, 1960B

Lots of players see the classic full stack setup and want it really bad for basically no other reason than it looks cool - which of course is the worst reason in the world to actually buy this type of rig.

The full stack rig is huge, bulky, heavy, inconvenient and most of the time is not the loudest setup unless you run it in a very specific way.

The deal with a full stack setup is this: If you're only running one amplifier head as shown above, that power is distributed across 8 speakers. So in effect, you're only delivering a maximum of 12.5 watts to each 25-watt speaker.

Sure, you'll see a very "bassy" sound out of driving 8 speakers, but in reality it's really not going to project that far.

If you want a full stack that truly blasts out the sound properly, you either need to run two 100-watt heads (one stacked right on top of the other) or a single 200-watt head. With two 100-watt heads, you are delivering up to 25 watts per speaker. With a single 200-watt head, same thing.

Fact: Most guys on stage who run full stacks only run the top half. The top half of the stack is raised so it can be heard easier (your ears are at your head and not your feet), and when running a 100-watt head through a single 4x12 cabinet instead of two, most of the time it actually will be louder.

Yes, this does mean some guys use a bottom cabinet just as a stand for the top cabinet.

It also means that if you're running a half stack setup, raising the cabinet does wonders. See below.

The Half Stack: Marshall JCM800 2203X, 1960AV

This is, without question, the best "big rig" setup you can own because it can basically handle almost any environment you'd play in (unless it's an arena where you'd actually need multiple rows of full stacks).

When you have a 100-watt head going through a single 100-watt (25-watt per speaker) 4x12 cabinet, the head can push up to a full 100 watts to those 4 speakers.

For any house party, bar or club you play in, the half stack works just fine and in fact is a little bit of overkill. It's very unlikely you'd ever half to turn up the volume past 6 with a rig like this.

Raising the cabinet a few feet off the ground helps out quite a bit as far as audio projection is concerned. This is a trick guitar guys have been using for years to get a single 4x12 cabinet heard better. The general rule of thumb is that the cabinet should be "at chest level" of the audience. If you're on a raised stage, that usually means you can leave the cabinet on the floor. If you're not on a raised stage, get a few milk crates and raise the cabinet a foot or two. Works great.

The only problem with half stack rigs is that like the full stack, it's bulky. Even with the casters on the bottom, getting that cabinet in and out of a van or truck is just plain annoying and more often than not is a two-man job.

The Combo: Fender Vintage Reissue '65 Twin Reverb

This is the amp most players choose to go with for several reasons.

First, you don't need two guys just to move this thing. It's heavy, but not so heavy that you can't move it yourself.

Second, it can handle house parties and small clubs easily. In a club, the amp can be miked to the house PA system, or if there's no PA you can raise it a few feet (again, milk crates work well for that) and it will project properly.

Third, generally speaking the combo will outlast separated heads and cabinets because the head isn't being banged around independently. Amplifier heads take abuse and that's just the way it is. With the combo, the likelihood of the head getting damaged is significantly decreased because it's actually part of the cabinet.

The only real drawback with a combo amp is that it doesn't have as much bass response compared to a 4x12 cabinet because of the smaller size and fewer speakers. However this is an acceptable tradeoff being that you can actually move this thing on your own and fit it into just about any car (meaning you don't need a truck or a van).

Stacks may look cool and project well, but the combo is ultimately more convenient and usually has all the volume you'd ever need for most situations.