The volume control is the first test

When a guitar comes into the workshop and I want to hear how it works, my first test is on the volume control. If you can get a nice, crunchy tone with it on ten, and you can roll that back and it cleans up — that's how it should be. That's the whole test. Most guitars fail it, and it's usually the wiring and the pot, not the pickup.

I love a fuzz pedal. Mine is on more than any other pedal — it's almost an always-on — simply because if I roll the volume back to about six, it cleans up like you wouldn't even know it's there. Which gives you that huge range between clean and the thick, woolly mess you get on ten. All that nuance in between, on one knob, under your hand. People forget that. A lot of younger players have never been shown it, and it's why there are so many pedals: they're buying, one box at a time, what the volume control was already doing.