Want to update your guitar tone without spending a lot of money? Looking to improve your bass tone on a budget? Reaching that next level of sonic distinction doesn’t mean you have to get a new guitar and amplifier — some of the most significant tonal changes you can make are more attainable than you may think. Whether you play acoustic guitar, electric guitar, or bass, let’s take a look at five tone hacks that come in under $50.
Try Some Different Picks
Let’s start right at the source — your choice of pick plays a huge role in your overall tone, as we’ve discussed in our article, “How to Choose a Guitar Pick.” Swapping out a thin pick for a thick one, or one material for another, can yield subtle but significant changes to your tone. A different pick shape will prompt you to address your strings slightly differently, also affecting your tone. A great way to experiment with the tonal changes a pick can make is with Graph Tech’s TUSQ picks, which offer different formulations for warmer tone, deeper tone, and brighter tone. Just switching between these three picks will show you how drastically your pick material can shape your tone.
Do you only play with your fingers? Here’s a way you can expand your tonal boundaries — try playing with a pick. Just as fingerstyle gives you access to tones you can’t achieve with a pick, the reverse is also true.
Experiment with Different Strings
Many players avoid prolonged string experimentation simply due to an aversion to changing strings often — but it’s one of the best ways to change the core sound of your instrument. As noted in our video, Best String Gauge for Your Bass Guitar Strings, changing string gauges will also affect your action and intonation and may require a truss-rod tweak, so be careful. But, even if you don’t want to change the gauge of your strings, swapping out your acoustic guitar’s phosphor bronze strings for 80/20 bronze can make a difference. For your electric guitar, changing from roundwound strings to flatwound strings gives you a whole new tonal range to explore. Whatever you try out, spend some time with the new strings, even if you don’t like them at first. And if you’re playing plugged in, remember that you dialed in your pedals and your amplifier to suit your old strings — dial it in again until you like what you hear from your new strings, and go from there.
For more on different types of guitar strings, check out our Electric Guitar String Buying Guide, our Acoustic Guitar String Buying Guide, or our Bass Guitar String Buying Guide.
Add a Treble Bleed Circuit to Your Volume Knob
This mainly applies to electric guitar, although applications for electric bass aren’t unheard of. If your guitar isn’t equipped with a treble bleed circuit, rolling back the volume control usually results in a loss of high frequencies. Installing a treble bleed circuit — simply a capacitor and resistor in parallel — lets you lower your volume while maintaining highs. Lowering your signal level changes how your guitar interacts with your pedals and your amplifier, giving you a new sonic range to explore. Installing a treble bleed circuit requires some soldering, so you may want to contact an expert, such as those in Sweetwater’s Guitar Workshop, if you want a pro to handle it.
Change the Bridge Pins on Your Acoustic Guitar
Your acoustic guitar tone can change noticeably just by swapping out your bridge pins for some of a different material. Hard to believe? Sweetwater experts actually did a bridge pin shootout in the article “3 Ways to Make Your Acoustic Guitar Sound Better” for this very reason. The article includes sound samples, and you (like us) may be shocked at how big a difference it can make. It’s a simple change that can yield big changes in your instrument’s dynamics and frequency response — and a very affordable change, at that. Check out our selection of bridge pins for your acoustic guitar.
An EQ Pedal Is Always Worth a Try
Whether you play guitar or bass, one of the simplest ways to shape your tone is with a simple graphic EQ pedal like the Behringer EQ700. A graphic EQ offers finer control over your tone than your amp’s tone controls; and it can be a great problem solver if you play in lots of different locations, since different rooms will emphasize or de-emphasize frequencies in different ways. You can use an EQ pedal to provide a frequency-specific boost or cut for different song sections, a full-bandwidth boost just like a typical boost pedal, or even a volume-lowering solution for quieter passages.
One more clever way to use an EQ pedal is if one of your effects pedals has its own send/return effects loop — placing an EQ pedal within another pedal’s loop will give you big tone-shaping power over just the effect’s sound, which could help it blend in better with your core guitar tone. Try it!
Little Changes Can Make a Big Sonic Difference
These are just a few examples of minor changes you can make to your instrument that will yield noticeable tonal differences. For a more philosophical take on how to improve your guitar tone, check out our tips on “Finding Your Unique Guitar Tone.” And don’t forget that your Sweetwater Sales Engineer is an expert at thinking outside the box when it comes to improving your guitar or bass tone — give them a call anytime at (800) 222-4700, and they’ll be happy to brainstorm with you.
