Guitar Gear

Over the years, I’ve listened to countless people and have read article after article about good tone. I’ve joined in or lurked on message boards discussing tone and who knows or who has good tone. It’s all bullshit, and let me tell you why.

First, by even saying the word “good,” we automatically get into the subjective. What might sound good to one person might sound horrible to another. For instance, lots of people rave about Jeff Beck’s tone. Personally, I’m not a fan. Without a doubt, he’s a great player with incredible technique, but I could take it or leave it as far as how he sounds. On the other hand, I love Santana’s tone. But a friend of mine can’t stand it. See what I mean?

Secondly, if we want to take it closer to home and talk about our own tone, even there, we’re standing on thin ice. The reason is that over time our perceptions and tastes change as we evolve as players. I went from playing clean amps with an overdrive and/or distortion pedal in front which was perfectly fine to my ears, to discovering the complex distortion provided by overdriving my amp and using an overdrive or a booster which is now the overdrive sound I prefer.

To this day, I hate my recorded tone. Part of that has a lot to do with the microphones I use and part of it has a lot to do with my cheap DAW software. I’ve gotten better at processing my recorded tone, but I’m still in search of good tone on my recordings – at least for overdriven amps. I’m fine with my clean and acoustic tones.

I shared my own displeasure because I found that my displeasure has often times led to extreme cases of GAS where I’d buy gear that I think will improve things. At one point, I was running two interconnected pedal boards in my studio with 25+ pedals between the two. It started out with just a few, then grew as I added overdrives, and modulation pedals and a few different expression pedals. In the end, I have a single board with 6 pedals for my live sound, and just plug straight into my amp and record the natural signal. That was a lesson that literally cost me thousands of dollars.

So is there really anything such as “good” tone upon which everyone can agree? Technically no, because as I said above, what might sound good to one person might sound uninspiring or even horrible to another. However, that said, it’s probably a good bet that a player has good tone if there is a general consensus that their tone’s good. Take Robben Ford, for instance. It’s generally accepted that he has great tone. Same with Eric Johnson. Sure, there may be outliers who don’t like their tone, but if they’re few and far between, chances are if someone mentions that these guys have great tone, it’s safe to accept that.

That said, I would caution you against just taking anyone’s word on what’s good tone and be especially wary of those people who say another person “knows tone.” I’ve seen a lot of that on forums; someone saying to listen to someone else’s opinion about tone because they “know good tone.” Usually, that stems from a newbie asking about how some gear sounds and others might pipe in and say, “Take this dude’s word on it. He knows tone.”

I think that’s the biggest crock of shit perpetrated on people who just want to get people’s collective perspective on how some gear sounds. That person who “knows tone” is usually a “forum bully.” But as they say, opinions are like assholes: Everyone has one.

Yeah, I know… it’s rare that I rant. I’m a generally “glass half full” kind of guy. But I got to thinking about this subject over the weekend, and some memories of previous conversations on this subject kind of pissed me off, so I decided to write about it. So… Flame off!