The One Thing Every Influential Guitar Tone Has In Common

[Dinosaur David B]

This guy does a lot of  . . .  almost Scientific Method-type tone testing videos. His conclusions can debunk some common guitarist dogma. 

This is pretty interesting:




Between this guy, Glenn Fricke's Spectra Studios tests, and my own experience, I've rethought some of my own ingrained opinions and dogma. And while I feel each of these guys sometimes misses something I care about (for example, Glenn ONLY cares about high gain metal tones, and everything he says runs through that lens)  . . .  A wise man changes his opinion in the face of better evidence. 

For example, I completely agree with Glenn that for his kind of modern, high gain metal, the ONLY thing that makes ANY difference in RECORDED tone is the speaker, the mic, and how much you move the mic. Things that don't matter sonically in this context are:

• Guitar type
• Pickup BRAND (you can hear the difference between HB and SCs)
• Amp type
• Tube type
• Tube amp vs amp sim plugin.

That's pretty shocking that most of us can't hear any of those differences in the recorded output. But once you realize those sounds are all about buzzy preamp gain -- coming from a 12AX7 (or similar) or from a sim, it starts to make sense. At clean to medium level gain (70s rock/80s melodic metal), you can hear a lot more of those nuances. 


This video talks about the tone in the room vs the recorded tone.  Here's where I am on that these days:

The tone in the room only matters in that if the player PERCEIVES that tone as uninspiring or lacking, the player may not achieve their best performance on the recording. First time I tried playing through an amp sim, the response and sound was so different from what I was used to from my amps, that I played terribly. Sims have gotten a lot better since then. It's a psychological thing. But that doesn't make it irrelevant. For most if us, the tone in the room may well matter to the PERFORMANCE. No, it doesn't matter much to the recorded output once EQd, compressed, mixed, etc. But the ultimate goal of recording is to get the best performance. NOT the best tone.
 
 

[axe]

I totally agree.
I've been saying for years that for high gain and most other metal it doesn't matter if you're playing a Paul or Strat (with HBs). They'll sound the same. Hell you could probably get by with any slab with humbuckers.

axe 

[Bytor]

This guy simply makes killer videos...

One of my fav subs..

I practice in "The Room" but record with cans on..
 Usually DI