i'm pretty much agreeing with what other people have already said... use the neck pickup, pluck the strings over the neck of the guitar if you have to, the further away from the bridge, the better. roll back your tone knob a little bit, roll down your volume knob a little bit, and crank up the gain on your amp. turn off the "bright" if your amp has a "bright".

failing all that, just get a new guitar. i'm amazed at the differences in tone between my guitars. the neck-through ones are super bright, the bolt-ons have much less high end, and the set necks range from darker (gibson gothic explorer) to all-around perfect ('81 ibanez studio). some guitars have jangle written all over them, others would never sound jangly no matter what you do. i had to put a seymour duncan Jazz pickup in my explorer just to get it to not sound totally dark.

if the guitar sounds good when it's not plugged into anything, then keep it. if the guitar sounds too jangly when it's not plugged in, you're starting from a bad place. you can pick it differently and try different strings to try and minimize the problem, but ultimately the construction of the guitar may be the driving force. hard to say without inspecting the specific instrument.

Thanks for the additional suggestions. Pickup replacement may be in my future. And I'll turn off the bright.

helicopters, what do you mean by "darker"?

tipcat wrote:Thanks for the additional suggestions. Pickup replacement may be in my future. And I'll turn off the bright.

helicopters, what do you mean by "darker"?

If you want to really hear what "dark" and "bright" mean grab and SG and strum it unplugged. Next, grab a Tele or a Strat and do the same. You will hear distinct acoustic differences in the two guitars. The mahogany in the SG will sound "darker" than the Strat. It is easier to hear than explain. Most fenders are made out of alder which gives more upper midrage response. Dark=warm low end midrange and bass response; less mids and trebble response.

yeah, what he said. playing a guitar without plugging it in will tell you a lot about what to expect once it *is* plugged in.

dark is like the opposite of bright. bright = lotsa treble (think of steve's general guitar tone), dark = not lotsa treble (think of a nylon-string acoustic guitar). in a nutshell, that's about it. i don't know if i have this wrong, but to me anyways, jangly is fairly synonymous with brightness, though that term also makes me think of a relative lack of low end and also a loose-string kinda sloppiness, too.

the material used to make the guitar has a lot to do with whether it's more or less bright. i'm no expert, and everything i "know" about this is pretty much based on assumptions i've drawn from personal experience, but i think the key thing to whether your guitar is gonna be bright or not is the density of the wood (or material, in the case of something like aluminum or whatever else you might try), with the neck mounting being a rather distant second in terms of relevance.

the pickups you use are another story, and are really the one variable you can fuck with on any given guitar without rebuilding it out of new materials. here is the seymour duncan "tone chart", that describes the output levels and tonal balances of their pickups.

at this point i can verify its accuracy with regard to two humbuckers, the Custom Custom and the Jazz model. i wanted a new pickup for my Explorer, which is really, really dark, in order to give it a more clear and shimmering clean sound. to make it *more bright*. i got a Jazz model, which if you check the tone chart for humbuckers, you'll see the jazz has a tone balance that's got loads of high freq to it. and it delivered perfectly. it's taken a naturally dark guitar and brightened up the electric sound a bit. and the Custom Custom pickup that was already in it when i got it, well it's *very* midrange-heavy, as their tone chart indicates.

i have another dark guitar (Ibanez Destroyer) with three humbuckers in it... i bought a Stag Mag for the middle position and a Custom Custom for the bridge position. i haven't put them in yet, but will very likely talk all about it when it's done.

i don't know what type of pickups your guitar has, but if you drop an "Original Trembucker" in the neck position, based on the tone chart, i would expect it would give you a less jangly sound, as it looks to be very un-trebly. i have no experience with this pickup or your specific guitar, so take this with a grain of salt and everything. another humbucker that stood out was the Invader, which looks to be light on the treble and also has a hotter output level, but something about the name alone, i dunno. it scares me. i feel like it's geared towards metal. but the specs would make that one something i would consider if i was in your position, and me being all about risk-reward, i'd likely pick one up and see if it did the job.

if you do drop in a new pickup, or if the one you have in there now has coil splitting capability, i would expect you will be happier with a humbucking configuration than with the coil split to perform as a single coil. single-coil is gonna give you a lower output level, and also a more trebly sound, or to put it another way, humbucking will give you higher output, and a less trebly sound, which sounds like what you're after. i love having coil splitting capability, because it allows you to *choose* which configuration is best for any given part in any song, rather than be locked into one configuration and that's all you've got. but i get the feeling most people don't like extra switches on their guitars.

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this doesn't really play into your situation, and won't do anything to help you with your tone, but it's come to mind and seems related to the general topic of the innate tone of a given guitar, so...

i don't know if this is always true, but in my experience with *my* electric guitars, there also appears to be a trend with regard to neck type, though i don't know if this is anything more than coincidence...

my two neck-through guitars are both very similar: heavy as shit, loads of sustain, lots of low end and *very* bright. with both of them, i find myself rolling the tone knobs back a bit to take off some of the razor-sharpness.

none of my other guitars compare to the two neck-through guitars when it comes to big low end or super-bright top end. i don't believe this is entirely attributable to their neck-through-ness, as both of them are made of *really* dense wood.

but it stands to reason that the more loose joints there are in the wood of a guitar, the less high frequency content it's gonna have. with neck-through, there's no neck-to-body joint in the first place. it's the same pieces of wood running from the top of the headstock all the way to the bottom of the guitar, past the point where the bridge attaches.

a fun experiment in taking treble content out of a guitar's sound would be to take a bolt-on guitar and put some kinda padding between the neck and the body where they connect, like 1/8" of rubber or something. i would expect that would dull the sound down a bit, and make it sound less sharp and maybe even bloated and muddy, taking some coherence out of the lower frequencies as well. i don't know that i'll take the time to try it, but it would be interesting to see what happens...

and don't overlook the relevance of picking.

the spot where you pick has a huge impact on the tone. HUGE. to see this in full effect, fret an open G chord. use a really heavy pick, and strum across the strings *really* close to the bridge. there's gonna be next to no bass at all, and it's gonna be razor sharp. then, the exact same fretting, strum the strings directly above the 14th fret. not kidding. it will be night and day, with as much low end as you're ever gonna get out of that chord. plucking a note 12 frets above the note you're fretting has a really special sound to it, because you're plucking the string exactly halfway between the fret and the bridge.

this is of course overly dramatic. most people don't explore this whole range of picking locations. but it illustrates the overall point, the closer to the bridge you pick the strings, the more jangly it's gonna be.

try heavier or lighter picks, too. and FWIW, the thing i mentioned a few weeks back, about making a pick out of a cut-up credit card... the density of that material, let's just say it's a thick pick but it's *really* mushy. using a pick made from a cut-up credit card will also work towards de-jangling your tone. no joke.

Thanks so much, Helicopters and everyone else. These are the clearest, detailed explanations I have read on the impact of wood, pickups, and pick technique on guitar tone. I now have options galore to investigate. Thanks again.

my pleasure. i would recommend looking to other sources to validate or invalidate anything i've said. i'm self-taught with regard to pretty much all music and gear-related stuff, so i expect my experiences likely leave me making incorrect generalizations here and there.

have fun!

toomanyhelicopters wrote:i don't know what type of pickups your guitar has, but if you drop an "Original Trembucker" in the neck position, based on the tone chart, i would expect it would give you a less jangly sound, as it looks to be very un-trebly. i have no experience with this pickup or your specific guitar, so take this with a grain of salt and everything. another humbucker that stood out was the Invader, which looks to be light on the treble and also has a hotter output level, but something about the name alone, i dunno. it scares me. i feel like it's geared towards metal. but the specs would make that one something i would consider if i was in your position, and me being all about risk-reward, i'd likely pick one up and see if it did the job.

I use Seymour Duncans almost exclusively, and I can tell you the Tone Chart is not very accurate. If you want to find out what a particular pickup sounds like, I would suggest you go to the forum there and ask users. It is the best forum on the net IMO for unbiased reviews by accual users. They also put no restrictions on discussions of other manufacterers. Fell free to discuss whatever you like.

toomanyhelicopters wrote:but it stands to reason that the more loose joints there are in the wood of a guitar, the less high frequency content it's gonna have. with neck-through, there's no neck-to-body joint in the first place. it's the same pieces of wood running from the top of the headstock all the way to the bottom of the guitar, past the point where the bridge attaches.

I would have to respectfully disagree. Theoretically, yes you would think that resonance would be lost. There might be less high end frequency response. In reality, speaking from a luthier's point of view (I am not one, but have spoken in depth with a bunch about this topic) The neck joint has really no bearing on how resonant a guitar will be. A tight bolt-on neck can be just as resonant as a set neck. If the tone wood is of good quality, you will have good resonance. Teles and Strats are some of the brightest guitars out there, both have bolt-on necks. Bolt-on necks accually tend to have more articualtion than a set neck or a neck-through. This also lends them to an overall brighter tone. This is not iron clad, and it really depends in the wood. The internal electronics cannot be overlooked either. The pickups and pots have a huge impact onthe "brightness" and "darkness" on tone. Pots with a value too low for the pickup (most humbucker w/250k pots) will give you a dark muddy tone as well.

bent_christian wrote:In reality, speaking from a luthier's point of view...Bolt-on necks accually tend to have more articualtion than a set neck or a neck-through.

why is this the case? why would neck-through have less articulation? i've read a bit that indicates that the reason leo chose bolt-on necks was because he wanted them to be easily replaceable if they were broken, not because they were better in any tonal respect.

toomanyhelicopters wrote:

bent_christian wrote:In reality, speaking from a luthier's point of view...Bolt-on necks accually tend to have more articualtion than a set neck or a neck-through.

why is this the case? why would neck-through have less articulation? i've read a bit that indicates that the reason leo chose bolt-on necks was because he wanted them to be easily replaceable if they were broken, not because they were better in any tonal respect.

Well, yes, Leo was a designer and business man, not a musician. Like I said I am not a luthier, just passing along information I have found. You would think a bolt-on would always have less sustain that a set neck, but this is just not always the case. I have played bolt-ons that would go for days, and I have played ones that such donkey dink. The same goes for set and neck-throughs. The same can be said for the Gibson stop-tail. IMO, that looks like the most sustain robbing design for a bridge you could put on a guitar, but for some reason it works. My SG sustains at least as long as my string-through Nighthawk. I don't know why, it just does. I did not mean to say that a bolt-on is better in any respect. I was meaning that it all comes down to the wood used, and the quality of the neck joint, not neccesarily whether it is glued in place or bolted on. Let me see if I can find the reasoning behind my answer and give you a decent response.