Tone Part 2 - Phalanges?

So what do I think and believe about tone?  It's pretty simple, really:

Tone is in your fingers.

It's an old cliche, sure, but one that I happen to believe very strongly.  In all the years I've been playing and listening to guitarists, I've found that the players that I consider to be the "best", or at least the ones that influence and inspire me the most, all share the same ability to sound great on whatever gear they're playing on.

Sure, you can make the argument that guys like Satch, Vai, Ford, Metheney, etc, all get to tour with their own equipment, set up by their own highly trained guitar techs.  And there's some truth to that.  But there have been too many instances where I've gotten to hear some of these players on gear that is not only NOT their own, but is frequently stuff considered to be sub-standard, and they've sounded great.

As an example, about 5 years ago, I had the pleasure of seeing Robben Ford play at Jazzbones here in Tacoma, WA.  It's a small club.  Not much of a sound system.  And Ford is not a rich man.  His tours are not usually large affairs with trucks of equipment travelling around with him.  So for this gig, he was playing a VERY nice guitar (a '60-ish Les Paul with P90's loaned to him by Larry Carlton) through one of the most beat up looking Fender Twin Reverbs I've ever seen.  He was going though his Zen Drive pedal for most of the night.

He sounded amazing.

Despite the fact that he didn't have his Dumbles with him (which he uses in the studio almost exclusively), he sounded exactly like Robben Ford.

Another example?  Click on the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9v5e1TTwts

Satch is playing on a Pignose guitar, through a cheap Peavey amp, and a DigiTech RP200.  Not exactly the high-end gear he's used to using, no?  But damned if he doesn't sound almost exactly like the album.

So what does all this go to prove?

Probably nothing.  But IMO, it goes a long way to help me believe that with the great players, gear is almost irrelevant.  I honestly think that if Stevie Ray, or EVH, or Jimi, or anyone picked up any guitar out there, and plugged it into just about any amp on the planet, they'd find a way to make it sound great.  And this makes sense if you think about it.  Most of these guys didn't exactly get to start playing guitar on great gear.  I mean, have you SEEN EVH's striped guitar?  It was a cheap homebrew that he mostly built himself.  He plugged it into the recording studio's stock Marshall amp and added a Variac switch to it.  The result?  Eddie's famous "brown sound".

There are times when I think that many guitar players are willing to believe that somehow, some magical combination of ingredients will create the "perfect" tone because they don't want to believe that practice is what will ultimately do it for them.  After all, why put in the 10,000 hours if you can plug your 1 piece extra light quartersawn cryogenically frozen guitar into your boutique point-to-point wired amp and sound as amazing as you've ever dreamed, right?

And maybe that's what bugs me about the tone obsession.  It almost seems like an excuse for laziness.  Sort of an "I don't HAVE to practice because my gear will make me sound great" mentality.  Of course, the catch is that the players that have that mindset never stand out from the crowd, because they've never learned their instrument.

Again, my primary issue is with the people that will try and tell YOU that that's the way it is, and has to be.  If they want to, I don't know, short change themselves that way, more power to them.  But when they go on to tell everyone that will listen that THEY should also short change themselves, well, that's when the crankiness revs up for me.  Go figger.

But, in the words of the once-great Dennis Miller, "that's just my opinon.  I could be wrong."