ERNIE BALL!! And check out Remy's post in the guitar section about active vs passive pick-ups. BTW: you don't need 3 arms....that's what the pinky finger on your right hand is for!

moonbaby wrote: that's what the pinky finger on your right hand is for!

yeahhhh... that's how mike from incubus did it in the "pardon me" intro...

for the rest of us...

i see no reason why you can't use a volume pedal. I mean all you've got on your guitar is 50k or whatever pot. a decent volume pedal will have the same, if not better.

Most definitely! That's how all the guitarists used to have to do it in "the old days"! Volume pedals for guitar used to really suck the tone right out and/or had an awful taper to them. Ernie Ball got it right! I was just giving Steven a hard time because he makes it sound so hard!

if youre recording, why wouldnt you just record the song at full volume and do a fade in with the faders on the board, or automate it rather than from a volume pedal or using the volume pot. At least on all my guitars, the volume pot affects the tone, so that the treble is lost at a lower volume as well as the attack. Im guessing a volume pedal would be just like adjusting the volume at the board??? is that true?

Chris

The best place to swell your volume is at the volume knob on your guitar if it's a 250k pot. Just takes a little practice 9highly recommended). 500k pots start to give you uneven response curves and 1M pots (usually found in active systems) are kind of useless for decent volume swells. Ernie Ball definitely does it right, their stereo pedals are really nice but you can't lose with their mono volume pedals. I never liked any of the Morely pedals I tried, not even for wah. Antique Vox all the way for the happy Wah shit (just my taste).

I have a tendency on recordings to do it the way vintage sound recommended - with volume envelopes. Volume envelopes mapped out on the track can give you infinite possibilities for control and effect, especially toward then end of the note as it begins to fade [which is sometimes where many of the most beautiful harmonics actually begin to generate].

moonbaby wrote: I was just giving Steven a hard time because he makes it sound so hard!

Moonbaby, I have no real problems with you. But you seem to enjoy giving me a hard time on more than 1 or 2 post(s).
I don't try to come across as a "know it all". I would much rather have a reputation of a helpful person than responds with his opinion or exp.
No one is always right (including me)
But if you must know. I have only been playing guitar for about 2 years. So I try to stay humble, and ask questions from a beginners perspective. I will learn the finger fade in time. And learn how to have a cocky guitar like persona once I'm a badass like Dimebag Darrel.
But my foots just sitting there doing nothing anyhow. No problems with you. Just remarking on what seems like a "constant hard time"

Steven, first off, my apologies for the hard time deal. As far as this post on the volume control deal was concerned, that was meant in fun. There are many guitars out there where this "pinky finger" approach is not really feasible, due to the knob type or placement. I have been playing for 'way too long to be where I'm at, and I use an Ernie Ball (2 of them).
Nothing wrong with that.
Now to the 2nd post that I suspect was the real pisser here. I have seen too many blown speakers in my time. Most of them are avoidable, in fact
just plain stupidly done. Keyboards plugged into Fender Twins, basses plugged into Marshall 4x12s, basses plugged into little dinky Crate acoustic guitar amps, DJs running the "sub"output to the "topbox", drum machines going into stereos that are cranked, the list goes on. Every couple of months I see a local Victor Wooten wannabe who plugs into a Dual Showman reverb amp, popping and slappin' the 'verb springs apart, and ripping the cones of a pair of vintage JBL D130s! And he doesn't care, because it's "his style"! As long as the check clears the bank....
Anyway, I shouldn't have been such a butthead about your advice to the dude. I had to put my 80-year-old dad into a home Monday, and I'm in a pissed-off-at-the-world mood. My apologies.