What is a Vari-Tone and how does it effect the tone of a pickup?
The Vari-tone system is a great tone circuit that has been used in the Gibson ES-345 and ES-355 guitars along with other custom instruments. Gibson says the Vari-Tone selector has six fundamental positions and the six pre-set push button switches place a wide choice of tone colorings at the player’s command. It’s a combination of capacitors, resistors and a choke that vary the tone when the rotor switch is rotated from 1 to 6. In each of the six positions a different value circuit when combined with the inductor (choke) it makes the pickups sound full to very thin. I believe this was a circuit designed by Seth E. Lover and was also used on the Gibson Vari-Tone Amplifier Model GA-80. My favorite amp of all times is the Gibson GA-79 RVT. It was a stereo amplifier and was a perfect match for the Gibson ES-355 Stereo non-tremolo, guitar which is probably the most beautiful guitar ever built.
