Is there really any more personal and divisive part of the guitar playing experience than tone? From people who spend tens of thousands of dollars on the highest end boutique gear, to the guys that deliberately look for the cheapest pieces of crap they can find, tone is the subjective holy grail that all guitar players find themselves searching for. Since everyone and their mother have their opinions on this Topic of Epicness, I figured I'd throw my own two cents into the fray.
Once upon a time, during a discussion I was having with another guitarist, he opined that he couldn't understand why so many guitar players spent so much time and money looking for tone because "it's a science".
This left me feeling a bit on the stunned side.
Sound waves are a science. Frequency and response are sciences. The engineering of guitars, amps, pedals, speakers, etc, are sciences.
Tone? I've always felt tone is more of an art. Tone is about as subjective a thing as exists in the world. What one person strives for and finds to be the greatest sound in the world, another finds to be nothing more than ear-splitting noise. As an example, let's take Eric Johnson's tone on "Cliffs of Dover". Now, the vast majority of guitar players I know find that sound to be unspeakably beautiful - rich, full, bell-like, overdriven without being muddy, with a ring to it that send shivers up and down one's spine. However, one of my co-workers once expressed a burning desire to take the wet towel off of his speakers.
How about Eddie Van Halen's famous "brown" sound? Again, the majority of people I've known think that that is one of the greatest guitar tones ever captured. But I once met a guy who couldn't stop dissing on everything about it.
I've had the same kinds of conversations regarding Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joe Bonamassa, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Pat Metheny, and on and on and on. And that's a good thing, damn it. One of the great things about playing the guitar is the sense of self-expression you get from it. Whether you feel like shredding all out a la Yngwie Malmsteen or Rusty Cooley, or just want to kick back and play simple rhythm guitar, what ultimately comes out of you is YOU. As long as you like the sound you're coming up with, then no one else's opinion matters. Nor should it. If you put your playing out in the wide world, then you should expect to get feedback and criticism. But at the end of the day, none of that matters. Your sound, your tone, is you, distilled.
What drives ME nuts is people who feel the need to sell you on what makes the "ultimate tone". Whether they're shilling for quartersawn maple, nitocellulose lacquer, some uber-special sooper seekrit capacitors, titanium Floyd Rose bridges, nickel-plated tremolo screws (yes, I've heard that conversation before), cryogenically frozen pickups or bridges, or what have you, there are people (who have GREATLY proliferated since the spread of the intrawebs) who will absolutely INSIST that you can't possibly have good tone without this week's snake oil special. They will express their opinions in ways ranging from the "trying to be helpful" to out-and-out venomous trolling. They're very passionate in their arguments.
I have my own ideas about tone, but those will have to wait for my next blog post.
For now, I would like to ask any guitar players that may be reading this blog: What do YOU think makes for great tone? What have you found that works for you?
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