Is the tone knob overrated?

It’s satire to the original subject line lol
Explain It Season 5 GIF by The Office
 
Should probably point out that there is no where in the article that Diamond says the tone knob is overrated. Only that she doesn't use them and it was first to go.

The idea that tone knobs are overrated only exists in the click-baity title by Guitar World.

For shame.
 
Should probably point out that there is no where in the article that Diamond says the tone knob is overrated. Only that she doesn't use them and it was first to go.
I can understand not finding them that useful for metal stuff.

But for anything else, hell yeah a tone knob is super useful. Turn your amp to teeth rattling treble, roll back guitar tone knob. Adjust darker/brighter as needed.
 
Such a big difference in the world of playing clean and playing dirty...

For the players that dime the overdrive to "11" --- I can understand why the tone knob is never used... It really depends on lot on the player ! I myself could NOT live without the tone control.. But I play clean most of the time...
 
Should probably point out that there is no where in the article that Diamond says the tone knob is overrated. Only that she doesn't use them and it was first to go.

The idea that tone knobs are overrated only exists in the click-baity title by Guitar World.

For shame.

Yeah. And Guitar World didn't even do the interview. They paraphrased and misrepresented a Guitar.com article that was quoting a video.

Here's the original video (relevant part at about 4:55):


Seems like she put a lot of thought into making a guitar for her and what she likes, which is sort of the point. She doesn't use a tone knob, so she cut it, and replaced it with a second volume knob so she can use the pickup selector as a killswitch. I've known metal guitarists, who also almost never use their neck pickup, who have done this exact mod for this purpose.

It's annoying that sites will do stuff like this basically as ragebait, and now a bunch of random people are mad at her, or saying she is a bad musician, for a thing she didn't even say.
 
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I usually leave tones on ten on a Les Paul, whereas on a Strat through a Plexi I find the tone control very useful, sometimes those single coil pickups are too bright for me with high gain.
 
I always use the tone knob a lot with Teles. Outside of them, I have been favoring darker amp sounds lately so haven’t been using it much, but for a while I was running my amps relatively bright and using the tone knob a lot, which gives a lot of flexibility while playing.

I don’t play metal type stuff often (not since high school anyway lol), but I basically never use the tone knob when I do.
 
The tone knob first made sense to me when I started to tame my Jazzmaster’s bridge pickup with distortion. Then I started applying the same principles to my Tele bridge pickup.
 
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