Get a great Jazz Tone on ANY Solid Body Guitar

If you still aren't the proud owner of a jazz archtop and want to know how to get a superb jazz tone on your solid body....the video I just posted is meant for you!

In it I discuss 6 factors that will ultimately influence the tone you get. I also recommend various small affordable upgrades you can perform to make ANY solid body sound jazzier. Lots of info here ranging from EQ tips, custom pick-ups, to what strings and picks I recommend!

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[RichieZellon]

NOTE: I am aware that I mistakenly said Tomastik Strings are "made in Germany" when in fact they are made in Austria. I should know better after using them for so many years. Unfortunately, I sub-consciously blurted out "Germany" while doing the video due to the fact that for the longest time (in the US) many players refer to them as being German due to the name. No excuses here. I have received various emails regarding this. My sincere apologies to anyone I might have ticked off with this!

[johnthecat]

less than a minute in, and the video editing is so unhip that I can already tell this guy is focused more on the quality of content than the appearance of the video. This is a good sign.

[kenboi]

Ahhh, relief. Finally you blinked at 11:52. Amazing. Nice video and info.

[nitroxsam]

Check out Ted Green and/or Tim Lerch. Heavy strings on low tuned telecasters. Single coil pickups, beautiful "jazz" tone. Green was the innovator, Lerch followed him and learned his techniques. Both are great imo.

[TerryMooreArt]

You are my favorite teacher Richie. And I’m watching most of the popular jazz folks on YouTube for some time now. Thank you for sharing your talent and expertise with patience and kindness.

[jinjxmusic]

Also my favorite pickup for jazz is the Gibson 57 Classic. I can tolerate most decent pickups though the 57 is just wonderful. I'll also settle for the Parson Street pickups that Stew Mac sells. For about half the price of the Gibson you can get yourself a wonderful pickup that sounds wonderful in jazz.

[DrJoshGuitar]

As a guy who is just getting into this style I was wondering why my tone wasn’t working with some jazz backing tracks. I watched this vid, made a few tweaks and walla..100% better!

[Noodlerification]

I'm not stoned but feel like I am, watching this. So entertaining :-) Subscribed

[ericwilliamson]

I love your videos. I suck at playing jazz but your videos make me feel like I can get there one day. Thank you.

[fontain]

I ordered a blue chip jazz III pick because I couldn't believe the audacity of charging so much for a single pick. But after I got it I ordered 2 more in various sizes and thicknesses because they really are amazing. Makes the traditional jazz IIIs sound like plastic

[timothydaniels]

I have a weird setup. I have a cheap Fender Sqiuire because I love the neck. I took out the pickups and replaced them with a Lollar Charlie Christian in the neck and a Lollar B.S. for the bridge. My strings are 48-12’s. Sadly, I don’t sound like the late, wonderful Ed Bickert who was a Tele guy. But, I would say that I have a jazz tone.
Being a Torontonian of a certain vintage it was easy to see Ed Bickert and Lenny Breau who played very frequently in Toronto. Ed lived here and so did Lenny in the early- mid 60’s.

[guitarman]

The blue chip pick is great because: PROS1. Hard material and will not leave pick dust. 2. Very smooth on the string. 3. Available in right or left hand, depending on your pick angle attack. 4. Great attack on strings producing a better tone. CONS: Easy to lose. Be sure and use a pick holster.
I have 3. Use them for all guitar styles, buy don't play jazz without my BlueChip.
Thanks for another wonderful video!

[GlennMichaelThompson]

Kent Armstrong makes some great jazz handwound pickups. He used to supply Benedetto Guitars with pickups until business increased for Benedetto. Kent runs a one man shop and I guess he couldn't keep up. But he still makes GREAT pickups.

[afgafg]

I’ve recently discovered the benefits of REMOVING a lot of the bass frequencies. This also helps the amp produce cleaner output as the bass frequencies will drive your amp more quickly into distortion. Use a 10-Band graphic or even better, a fully parametric EQ pedal or module in your modeler BEFORE the amp model. Start by removing several decibels below 300hz keep the ones between 400hz and 1Khz, and remove some of the highs from 1K up. Don’t kill ALL of the 5-20K so that you maintain some attack. By using a bass-cut circuit in your guitar (see several modification articles), or simply placing and EQ before your amp to cut the ultra-low frequencies, your sound will be much cleaner, clearer and still have the Jazz-Box warmth. 👍

[MarkusBoettner]

Thank you so much for this invaluable and interesting video. I would love to dip my toes into the waters of 7-string Jazz guitar playing, but 7-string guitars are either
• super expensive,
• super hard to come by or
• out of production, such as the Ibanez AFJ 957.

7-string solid body guitars are less pricey and, first and foremost, easier to find.

Buying a 7-string solid body by Ibanez or even a good Harley Benton (*1) and tweaking it the way you suggest seems to be the path I will be taking.

Again, many thanks, and you've got yourself a new subscriber. :)

(*1) Thomann Germany is a 2-h drive from me, and I go to their magnificent store about once every year, bought my Cajon, my Epiphone Dot Deluxe Blue Burst, my condenser mic and my stage piano from them, all tested in the store. So I'll be testing my 7-string solid body on site. :)

[jinjxmusic]

What's said here is very important information. I would also like to respectfully add: in addition to rolling back the tone knob, rolling back the volume knob helps as well. Especially with guitars with hum buckers: they often have a 500K potentiometer and turning both the volume and tone knob to 10 can make the guitar more likely to clip. Its a harder "loud" for your amp and may not sound as warm. I personally like to turn the volume to 5 and the tone to 6 on my main hollow body. I then set the amp a bit louder and feel like the guitar sounds more appropriate. I would also highly recommend against turning the tone knob all the way off. Sometimes it can sound good, though it's a bit of a trap and doesn't always sound good when playing with a second guitar player. Better to force the ear to handle a bit of highs so that you're getting your "jazz" sound not just from tone, but feel and note selection. One more thing: I recommend making sure you have a linear potentiometer for volume on all guitars. Many guitars will have a linear volume (500KB) pot and an audio (500KA) pot for tone. The linear pot keeps a consistent high frequency range for the entire sweep and is great for musicians who keep their volume at around 5 or rockers who like to turn up to 10 for solos and turn down to clean up. Unfortunately many guitars have audio (A) pots in all positions which I think isn't as versatile. You'll get a muddy sound when you turn down and not in the "jazz" way that we like. I say it's better to have a clear constant sweep from 1 - 10 and roll the tone off if you need than have the volume pot cutting highs until it's turned up too loud. Anyway, just my respectful views. Thank you for posting this video.

[TheHumbuckerboy]

Wes Montgomery got one of the best and most distinctive of all  jazz tones without using a pick; Wes used his thumb to great effect.

[stevenpape]

Another great jazz tone for 2 P90 pickups, Both pickups on, neck pickup Vol 8, Tone 4. Neck pickup Vol 1, Tone 10 (yes 10). Use the neck pickup VOLUME control to dial the treble in or out. be subtle.

[Skinny_Karlos]

I've just discovered your channel in the last month and I'm really enjoying it. Your tips are truly helpful to an old (52) Aussie who's a classically trained lifelong guitar devotee, realising in the last three years or so that jazz is a different animal entirely. I can read the "dots" but as my jazz teacher said to me, on my first lesson, be prepared to sound BAD for a fair while he said like a Doctor delivering some terrible news - it actually made me laugh, especially in the ensuing weeks /months when I realised that he wasn't kidding. Basically, my longwinded point here is that I agree with your six points but have to say that no: 06 is absolute. Until that 'feel" gets you, or you get that feel, it doesn't matter as much what you're using - it just helps things a little.
Getting yourself to be a jazz guitarist is the first, or at least MY first priority even though I do all those other things to help me sound better, it really is an internal matter of listening to the "greats", listening to myself and listening to those I'm playing with to try to find that elusive place where jazz guitarists' live.
Thanks for your advice and help. At the very least watching a new release always seems to get that 175 in my hands and that's always a good thing.

[gnatiu]

I dismounted the bridge single coil pickup from my telecaster, reamed the bridge pickup chamber so that a Seymour Duncan Jazz-Humbucker would fit, changed the tone capacitor and disabled the pickup switch - actually there is no pickup switch anymore on that guitar :) It is always in neck humbucker mode. Only the tone knob is a push-pull; it is possible to split the neck pickup. The strings are 0.11s these days and flatwounds also do the job, but I had to work on the nut a bit. The result is a warm jazz tone. Even with the tone knob on zero; you wouldn't have the heart to turn that knob up anyway. Everybody who sees this guitar is baffled by its tone and the "construction" of it: Only one Pickup, no switch and great tone.