Guitar Gear

I’ve been playing guitar for over 46 years, and no matter what might be in my signal chain, the difference-maker between sounding good and sounding great has ultimately lain with the guitar. To me, when you play a great guitar, it can bring the best out of any signal chain; though I need to qualify that if a signal chain sounds like crap in the first place, while a great guitar could make the sound passable, there’s no complete cure to a bad-sounding rig.

Mind you, the price has nothing to do with making a guitar great. Hell! I’ve had a few guitars over the years that cost a tenth of some guitars and they kick the shit out of them with respect tone and playability. When I say a guitar is “great,” it has everything to do with the guitar’s character. And when I feel a guitar has a special character, it speaks me to in such a way that I can be maximally creative. It will make me explore what tones I can get out of it.

Such is the case with my beloved “Katie May,” my custom Slash L guitar built by my friend good friend Perry Riggs. This guitar is what I consider to be a truly great guitar. I can put her in front of any of my various rig combinations, and she will sing. Absolutely sing.

But I can also say the same for my humble Squier CV Telecaster. It is literally worth a tenth of Katie May, but I love playing that guitar, even with its little quirks like a super-thin neck and low frets.

The point to all this is that we gear sluts have a tendency to fixate on bells and whistles and little minute details. We spend incredible amounts of time perusing forums and trying out gear in a quest to find that tone unicorn. As for me, that quest led me to build up a hoard of instruments and accessories; 90% of which I have either sold or just sit in my garage collecting dust.

In America, we have a saying: Hindsight is 20/20. That means when you look back, you can always see more clearly, and looking back almost invariably leads to saying things like, “If I only did this…” or “Hmm… I could’ve done that…” We all do it. And this article is doing a bit of that. But I also believe in this saying: “It’s water under the bridge,” which means that all the stuff I’ve done is just flowing past. I made my choices and am moving on. But that doesn’t mean I can’t share some tidbits of what I’ve learned along the way.

Besides, let’s face it: It was VERY fun acquiring all that gear! 🙂

On a more serious note though, as I stated in the title, a great guitar really can make all the difference. And at the risk of sounding cliché, our quest for the unicorn starts with the guitar. Everything else is peripheral; even the amp we choose. After all, if a guitar doesn’t feel good, or doesn’t sound good with the gear you’re using to produce sound, what does it matter?

Such is the case with Gibson ES-335 guitars I’ve had over the years. I love these guitars! I’ve purchased three of them in the last 15 years but have sold every single one of them. They’re fantastic guitars, but for some reason, I’m very fickle when it comes to the ES-335. So I tend to stay away from them.

The only exception to this was my very first one, which was a bare-bones ES-330. I sold it because I needed the cash (it was a difficult time for me then), and have regretted the decision since. I was still getting into electric guitar at the time and knew that there were still a lot of territories to cover and discover with that guitar (read: I also needed to get better at playing) that when I look back, I didn’t really get to spend the time with it. But my rig was also in a lot of flux at the time. So I sold off the stuff that wasn’t jibing well. Perhaps now that I’ve found my sound and my rig is fairly established, I’ll explore an ES-x in the future. But I digress…

I know you’re probably thinking: So what makes a guitar great? Hopefully, you’ve gleaned from this discussion thus far that “greatness” is entirely subjective; that is, as the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. YOU have to decide if a guitar is great for YOU.

Especially if you frequent online gear forums, there’s always the risk that you fall into the trap of getting bamboozled by all the chatter, relying on people’s opinions who come off as knowledgeable about this and that. But remember this: Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one. NO ONE can tell you what sounds good and what does not.

The important thing to bear in mind is that it doesn’t matter WHAT you play. If it inspires you to create music and sounds good to YOUR ears and feels good in YOUR hands, then you’re good to go.