There is a truism that comes into play:
I do what I can to snuff it out. It's real obvious where it comes from, you set your guitar knobs to 10, then set your amp up to sound it's best - then everything your knobs do diminish the tone, rather than control or enhance it. There are even some good guitarists who only get that far, then go to work for years on the other aspects of their playing. And there are plenty of guitarists who in a performance setting, find it's safest to control all their desired settings with footswitches. But if you practice that way, and evolve three or four "settings" you'll miss out on a lot of what guitars can do. And if you consider what "real-life" situations you get asked to play in - i.e., somebody sticks some guitar in your hands and you either can, or can't - it's a good idea to learn about all the possibilities. Consider that the one guitarist who to this day, most younger ones remain in awe of - Jeff Beck - his starting point is amp volume, 10, amp treble, 10; guitar tone and volume 0 and 0. From there he can get anything he wants. Even the best of the modern effects-laden players like Oz Noy, Julien Kasper & Chris Poland use the guitar volume-to-1st-fuzzbox connection as an important starting point. I do understand the point of a "blaster switch" - straight-through - but totally dismissing tone and volume knobs will limit you. A guitar without tone controls is like a car without a transmission, good for a 1/4 mile maybe, but the tone of all that nice wood is largely bypassed by a blast-only setup.
I do what I can to snuff it out. It's real obvious where it comes from, you set your guitar knobs to 10, then set your amp up to sound it's best - then everything your knobs do diminish the tone, rather than control or enhance it. There are even some good guitarists who only get that far, then go to work for years on the other aspects of their playing. And there are plenty of guitarists who in a performance setting, find it's safest to control all their desired settings with footswitches. But if you practice that way, and evolve three or four "settings" you'll miss out on a lot of what guitars can do. And if you consider what "real-life" situations you get asked to play in - i.e., somebody sticks some guitar in your hands and you either can, or can't - it's a good idea to learn about all the possibilities. Consider that the one guitarist who to this day, most younger ones remain in awe of - Jeff Beck - his starting point is amp volume, 10, amp treble, 10; guitar tone and volume 0 and 0. From there he can get anything he wants. Even the best of the modern effects-laden players like Oz Noy, Julien Kasper & Chris Poland use the guitar volume-to-1st-fuzzbox connection as an important starting point. I do understand the point of a "blaster switch" - straight-through - but totally dismissing tone and volume knobs will limit you. A guitar without tone controls is like a car without a transmission, good for a 1/4 mile maybe, but the tone of all that nice wood is largely bypassed by a blast-only setup.
