THOUGHTS

Volume Control Liberation!
Why Keith Richards Never Turns Down (And How You Can Get That Knob Back)

June 19, 2025 • Dan Holtz, Lakeside Guitar

Picture this...

You're jamming in your home studio, and you've dialed in that perfect tone. Amp cranked to that sweet spot where it's growling but not making your neighbors consider calling the authorities. Your guitar volume is maxed out at 10, and life is good.

But then you need to clean things up for the bridge section. You reach for that volume knob, roll it back to 7, and... *thud*. Your crystalline highs just disappeared faster than your bank account at Guitar Center. Welcome to every guitarist's least favorite physics lesson.

The "Always at 10" Club

While I am no Keith Richards, we do have something in common. We never turn down. The volume knob on his legendary '54 Telecaster "Micawber" is rumored to have NOT been rolled back from 10 since about 1967.

But look, Keith's a rhythm guitarist's rhythm guitarist. He's built his entire playing style around staying at maximum volume and using other techniques to control his dynamics. That works great when you're Keith Richards, but what about the rest of us mortals who occasionally need to dial things back without our tone turning into mush?

Why Your Volume Knob Betrays You

When you turn down your guitar's volume, you're not just reducing the signal level – you're also changing how the circuit behaves. As the volume pot's sweeper moves, it increases the resistance between your pickup and the output. This higher resistance, combined with the natural capacitance in your pickups and guitar cable, creates a low-pass filter that increasingly blocks high frequencies.

Put simply, more you turn down, the more your high end disappears. Where does it go? To the 'ground' instead of the output jack.

So, when the volume is up, the only frequencies being blocked from getting through to pedals and amps are too high to have much of an effect on the ear. Turning the volume down raises the resistance, so the frequencies that get cut off are increasingly more of the high end that you can hear — hence the denser tone.

Meet the Treble Bleed Circuit

A treble bleed circuit is essentially a bypass for your high frequencies. It allows the highs to 'bleed' (or pass) through the volume pot even when it's rolled down. It blocks most of the signal, but allows a high band to travel right from input to output without passing through the 'sweeper' in your pot. That's the part that adjusts voltage when the knob is turned.

The beauty of this is the simplicity. We're talking about adding a small capacitor (and often a tiny resistor) between two lugs of your volume pot. That's it. No complex rewiring, no rocket science, just a couple of tiny, cheap components.

Three Flavors of Tone

There are three good approaches to treble bleed circuits, each with its own personality:

The "Cap Only" Method
Fender started using this in the 1960s on their Telecasters, combining a 1000 pF capacitor with a volume potentiometer rated at 1M. It can make your guitar sound progressively more "tinny" as the volume approaches zero, but works well for high clarity at mid-upper volumes.

Parallel Wiring
Adding a 150k-ohm resistor in parallel with the capacitor means your high- and low-end rise and fall in concert, keeping your tone intact regardless of volume knob position. The downside? It can dramatically change how your volume control feels – you might get a gradual decrease through most of the sweep, then a sudden drop-off at the end, making fine adjustments tricky.

Series Wiring (The "Kinman" Circuit)
In series wiring, the resistor and capacitor are connected one after the other in a chain, rather than side-by-side. This setup protects your treble response nearly as well as parallel wiring, but maintains a familiar volume sweep – but passes a little more midrange – than the equivalent parallel circuit. The series approach gives you treble preservation without the weird volume taper issue.

The Right Setup for Your Guitar

The key is finding the right match for your instrument. Every link in your chain has an impact on how your guitar's volume pot performs, every one of your guitars may require a different circuit. Your Telecaster with single-coils might love a different setup than your Les Paul with humbuckers.

Getting it right the first time requires understanding how your specific pickups, pots, and playing style all work together. The wrong values can leave you with a guitar that gets too bright as you roll down, or one that still loses clarity despite the modification.

Work With a Tech

A treble bleed circuit won't turn you into Keith Richards overnight (you'll need about 50 more years of practice and a some questionable lifestyle choices we won't get into here). But when done right, it will give you back control over your volume knob without sacrificing your tone's sparkle.

The components themselves cost just a few dollars, but getting the values dialed in perfectly for your guitar and playing style can make the difference. Also, clean wiring jobs are hard to do when you don't solder components all the time.

Curious about how a treble bleed might work with your specific guitar? Every instrument is different, and the best approach depends on your pickups, pots, and what you're trying to achieve tonally. Feel free to reach out if you'd like to discuss what might work best for your axe.