Guitar Gear

Read an interesting article by GuitarFlame (www.guitarflame.com) called: The science of playing the acoustic guitar where he talked about a very good shredder who picked up an acoustic guitar, and sounded… bad. That made me giggle a bit because I’ve seen the same thing with a lot of shredders. They sound horrible on acoustic guitars; actually I’ve heard several who sound pretty bad playing clean. As GuitarFlame put it, there’s more than meets the eye to playing acoustic. That’s certainly true, but I think it’s even more than that. I think a lot guitarists forget that 90% of their tone comes from their hands. Lots of guitarists, especially young ones, think it’s all in the equipment, but it’s not. Yes, equipment has a lot to do with the quality of the sound that you produce, but your hands and fingers are responsible for making the sound, and thus giving you your tone. How you articulate your fretting hand, where you pick, palm muting, finger picking, all these in their various combinations produce different tones. Pick closer to the bridge, and you get a tinny, chimey tone; closer to the neck and you get a fatter tone because of the larger amplitude of the string vibrations.

I’ve discussed at length with a close friend about this very topic – several times. He’s got the money to buy gear any time. And while he sounds a little better each time he buys a new guitar or amp, it’s only his sound quality that improves. I finally challenged him after this last round of acquisitions to not buy more equipment and work on his tone. I told him that the cheapest way to start sounding better is to simply… practice. Developing tone is free – you just need to take the time to do it.