Picking Hand keeps hitting volume knob

[Merrill]

This is probably a silly question, but I am having a real problem trying to keep my fingers / knuckles from hitting the volume knob on my strat when I apply the suggested wrist motions and pickslanting. I have tried keeping my fingers in the air, but they still strike the volume knob. I have tried tucking my fingers into my palm, but they still hit the volume knob.

I am resting one pad of my palm on each side of the saddle, as Troy suggested, sliding it up and down as needed. I see many of the great pickers striking the strings over the middle pickup area. I am afraid that, if I rest my hand on the saddle, I can not reach that area on the top two strings and moving the position of my hand slows me down quite a bit. I have tried to apply more pronation to my forearm in an attemot to create some space for my fingers, but this gets quite painful very quickly.

Any suggestions? Many thanks.

[Thegent]

I’ve gone through that with strat style guitars - it’s annoying AF.

My advise to you is to prioritize the technique you have that is working and either tape down or move the volume knob to one of the tone positions (whatever is needed)…

…the reason I suggest this is because I found the problem (for me) was temporary - that is once I baked in the technique, moving the fingers out of the way of the volume knob was not a problem. It was hard for me to know this as I was leaning it…so hopefully this is fruitful for you.

[Norseman]

I just can’t seem to stop myself from hitting the volume when I get really into it and not thinking about any. So many times at gigs that would happen and take my head right out of the game as I - in a millisecond prick and scramble my hand to turn the volume back up. That’s why I sold a PRS SE I had many years ago. But many years later PRS comes out with the DWCE24 Floyd. Dustie Waring’s signature model that they actually move the volume knob back for that very reason. I bought one and LOVE it.

[Milkweed]

I just bought a PRS SE CUSTOM and I’m having this very problem with the volume knob!
I love the guitar but don’t like this problem.
Tommo suggested I put a washer under the knob (on the post). That would make the knob harder to turn.
That makes sense and so I tried it.
But I still hit the knob and can’t seem to stop.
Perhaps as my technique becomes more refined this will “take care of itself”. But so far, no.

I’m toying with the idea of buying a low-end electric without a volume knob there.
To that end, any suggestions???

Btw, I got this guitar before I started working on my technique here, so it wasn’t a consideration when I bought the guitar.

[Norseman]

That’s a beautiful guitar. I wish I had a better solution but maybe in time you learn to adapt your picking?

[Milkweed]

Thanks! It is a lovely guitar. I’m happy with it otherwise. (And this is certainly not the fault of the guitar.)
I use a pad-to-pad grip that some call “underhanded”. (Not as in shady but as throwing a softball underhanded: when I play, my palm is angled toward the ceiling.) This puts a lot of flesh and bone betwen the high E string and the volume knob.
Perhaps in time I will adjust and avoid this. Fingers crossed!

[Riffdiculous]

For certain types of technique, and likely the physical build of the player, volume knob placement is definitely an issue. Paul Gilbert always removed the tone knob and put the volume in its place for this very reason (and his recent signature models have the knobs far out of the way). If your technique is working, I’d look for a suitable instrument to accommodate that, or have a luthier alter an axe you already own. No reason to let a particular instrument dictate what you can do on it, unless you own it solely for collection purposes.

[jmath90]

One option would be to remove the volume knob and control the volume using a ‘volume pedal’.

Joe Robinson removes the volume knob on his strat as he tends to plays behind the bridge pickup to get that snarly tone for effect. He’s got big paws as well. I also have a love-hate relationship with the strat vol knob. On one hand it’s perfect for volume swells but on the other hand it does get in the way based on your picking hand technique. I have the same issue with John Petrucci’s signature guitar with the center position toggle switch.

[Milkweed]

Thanks. I just looked at some of Gilbert’s guitars. I had noticed them before in some of his instructional videos on YouTube but hadn’t paid attention to the placement of the knobs. Having them well out of the way like that would really suit me!

I’m still ironing out the wrinkles in my picking. I need to complete that before getting a guitar to accommodate it. (The current one is only an issue with some licks on the high E string, so I can work on my speed on this guitar.) But I’ll definitely keep this one in mind.

Again, thanks!

[Milkweed]

I’ve thought about that. I rejected the idea at first on aesthetic grounds. But now I’m coming around to, well, it’s not like I’m throwing away the knob, I can put it back on anytime I want.

Knowing me, I’ll probably be ready to actually do this in a couple days.

[Twangsta]

This was an issue when I was transitioning back to strats after years of playing a tele style guitar. It was very annoying to start with, one thing that helped me was to keep my pinky curled under the knob and if there was any contact I started to instinctively bush the knob to make sure the volume was all the way up. Now I don’t even think about it.

You will get used to it, stick with it.

Yngwie Malmsteen Demon Driver HP

Yngwie has two positions, think it’s tone dependent, some times he’s playing closer to the neck pickup, other times just around the middle pickup. You can see his pinky shift ahead of the knob or curl around it. I guess here it’s if he’s playing riffs on the lower strings, the pinky is forward and above.

edit: been aware of my own technique since reading this thread, it’s similar, two positions, the common anchor is the ring finger resting under the high E string, it’s muting the string and resting against the pick-guard, also noticed the pickguard has ware where it usually rests, when I’m not using the high E string, my pinky joins the ring finger anchored against the high E string and pickguard. If there is contact when above the knob, I instinctively nudge the knob down to check if it’s full volume, and the same if its below, it’s subtle and I hardly notice it but when ever there is contact I think I check without thinking, also looking for just 1 or 2 mm of travel at the most.

[jmath90]

I’m not sure if Joe Robinson has rewired his strat after removing the vol knob. You could probably get a custom pickguard that covers the ‘hole’ if you were planning on removing the vol knob. I think Warmoth offers this option to not have a vol knob on the pickguard. This way it looks clean and you can control the volume using the volume pedal

[Milkweed]

Interesting. Thanks.
My guitar doesn’t have a pickguard.
As for removing the knob, if I do, it will just be the knob itself, not the post the knob fits on.
It’s all a work in progress, isn’t it???

[joebegly]

It might be difficult but have you thought of checking out some players who play PRS guitars and have a similar supinated setup that you use? See what they do to navigate this issue?

I have an Ibanez where the volume knob gets in my way too. I don’t hit it, but when I play on the E and B strings I feel like I need a different hand position than the other strings and the transition feels awkward.

Igor doesn’t seem to have this (or any) problems. He is fairly supinated but doesn’t have the same trailing edge grip you do. He’s playing a PRS here

Igor Paspalj - 17th Century Chicken Picking (Chris Impelliterri)

Then here’s one where he’s playing a similar Ibanez model to mine

Dream Theater - The Best of Times - Solo cover by Igor Paspalj

Seems like his pinky is behind that volume knob quite often…how he keeps from touching it and messing up the volume setting…I dunno exactly how he achieves that.

Hopefully this helps! Good luck.

[Riffdiculous]

The knobs on that PRS are in a different spot than Milkweed’s - you can see how much further back the volume is from the bridge pickup on Igor’s.

On the RG (and in the PRS vid), he’s extending his pinky quite a bit and anchoring with the ring, so it could be worth playing around with that.

[tommo]

@joebegly

It might be difficult but have you thought of checking out some players who play PRS guitars and have a similar supinated setup that you use? See what they do to navigate this issue?

Agreed! Typically one could lift the pinky away from the volume knob when necessary. That’s what Yngwie does on a strat (even though he has a different setup compared to @Milkweed 's “Benson-eqsue” posture).

See here the ascending scalar run around 0:58 — notice how the pinky lifts and kind of moves around the volume knob to avoid hitting it as Yngwie ascends (video is a hilarious mash-up by the way ):

Yngwie Malmsteen - The Voice Russia 2018 5-й сезон шоу "Голос")

[joebegly]

@tommo

See here the ascending scalar run around 0:58 — notice how the pinky lifts and kind of moves around the volume knob to avoid hitting it as Yngwie ascends

He is always just brilliant. One of the most naturally intuitive players ever

[Milkweed]

Tommo, I do see what you’re talking about there. Yngwie’s pinky does curl around the volume knob. I’ll see what I can do. ;o)

[osbug]

I did this with one of my guitars, where I was always knocking the volume knob. I actually used some drag washers out of a fishing reel. They are pretty much designed to have exactly the effect I wanted. It’s hard to make the knob move by accident, but easy to turn it on purpose! Drag washers are fairly cheap, but I happen to work in a place that has plenty of them, so I’ve done it to almost all my guitars!

[Milkweed]

That makes sense. But for me the problem was more than accidently turning down the volume—it was hitting the knob itself. I was doing it too much. Then I became aware of it and tried not to—it was distracting.
I may fix this problem later but right now I’m trying to fix my picking and want to focus only on that.
Eventually, I’ll need to play well on guitars with a volume knob there, but for now, that can wait.