Who/What Epitomizes Great Tone to You?

[Gabriel E.]

There are so many.

 

Malcolm Young. Angus gets all the attention but the sound that Malcolm gets is pure bliss for me.

 

Robert Cray's and Mark Knopfler's clean sounds are astounding.

 

Zakk Wylde's tone is pretty impressive.

 

John Abercrombie's tone on Richard Lloyd's "the Water is Wide" is beautiful.

 

Carlos Santana on anything. His sound on "Blues for Salvador" is what made me want a PRS. But going back to the late 60s he always sounded great.

 

Jeff Beck's tone has always been great. I still don't understand how he gets that sustain.

 

Vernon Reid got some great sounds out of that refrigerator-sized rig he used to use.

 

I also like Roy Nichols' tele sound from the old Haggard records.

 

I could go on and on.

[Gabriel E.]

Of the well known sax players, Coltrane's tone was pretty abysmal.

Yeah. His tone on "Naima" is really lousy.

[Jazz Guitar]

Originally posted by Gabriel E.:

Of the well known sax players, Coltrane's tone was pretty abysmal.

Yeah. His tone on "Naima" is really lousy.

I'd take Kenny Cheeze's tone over Coltrane's on "My Favorite Things". Lucky for Coltrane he had McCoy Tyner to distract people.

[revolead]

Eric Johnson - period.

[Blue Strat]

Angus & Malcolm Young, Brian Setzer, Billy Gibbons, B. B. King, Billy Corgan & James Iha, Jack White (slide)

[jbote]

Dave Davies...Dave Edmunds...Jimmy Vaughan...Richard Thompson...

[skipclone 1]

For clean sound-The Pretenders-just heard that song `Human` last night-freakin sweet

Does anyone know a band called The Ocean Blue? don`t know their gear but some fine fine clean playing, rings in my head after the song is finished.

Mark Knoppfler

The guy in Chris Issac`s band-forgot his name

I`m not much in to Zakk, don`t know his stuff well but doesn`t click for me. He needs to ease up on the weights, sounds like he`s about to tear the fretboard off.

Eric J.-amazing. He`s not a bad singer either.

after that it`s the usual suspects...

[kitaristi0]

Jimmy Page on the Immigrant Song Intro and Verse.

[meek20]

This is very hard to narrow down!

 

(1) Little Charlie (Little Charlie & the Nightcats)

 

(2) Eric Clapton (Cream & the Bluesbreakers era)

 

(3) Rich Robinson (The Black Crowes)

 

(5) Keith Richards & Mick Taylor(The Rolling Stones)

 

(6) Trey Anastasio (Phish)

[meek20]

Disclosure:

 

Those were in no particular order, by the way.

[Funk Jazz]

i can't add anything that hasn't been said in the electric realm, but Tony Rice's acoustic guitar tone is unbeatable.

 

here's my fav electric tones anyway, in no order/era:

 

robben ford

wes montgomery

robert cray

trey anastasio

danny gatton

eric johnson

eric clapton (live cream)

duane allman

[comfortat]

Meek20: I thot Keith richards played for the Monkees? Thanks for clearin dat up.

 

Wow, 2 nods to Trey, thot i was alone there for a minute.

[michael saulnier]

Reading this discussion, it makes me note that some players have basically ONE, (often awesome), tone that is their signature.

 

A few notes, and you just KNOW it's them. Even if they change guitars or amps... they "know" how to get "their" sound, and their rig, combined with their head, heart and hands makes that sound come out. I guarantee you that if you heard Santana playing through Eric Clapton's rig... he would still sound like Santana.

 

This is fine, and really it's a credit to the unique "thing" they bring to the guitar. This is NOT always true with less talented players.

 

On the other hand some of my favorite players use MORE than one sound in their music.

 

To me, Hendrix, (in combination with the engineers he worked with), was one of the best at this. On records like Electric Ladyland, almost EVERY song has a different texture or sound of guitar... Same with Axis Bold as Love. To me, it's hard to describe his sound as "harsh" if you're talking about songs like Little Wing or Castles made of Sand... although clearly many of his songs DID have a heavy, distorted, or effected tone. But in reality, Hendrix didn't really have ONE tone.

 

I don't really judge whether I like a musician based on whether or not they have a signature "tone" or not... that seems a bit too close minded to me... but I DO like artists that can change their tone to fit the song... or make the unique tone a PART of the feel of the song.

 

I wish I could be better at that in my OWN music.

 

Here's someone searching for "their" tone(s)!

 

guitplayer

[Gruupi]

Basically anybodies tone but my own hehe.

Eric Johnson is the one that always does it for me. I used to get to see him in smaller clubs where I was actually hearing the amps and I couldn't believe the guitar could sound so good. His recordings are ok but they don't really capture the depth of his many tones.

SRV sounded great also, even though alot of people tried to sound like him, no one really ever did.

Jimmy Page in a different sort of way. If you take any guitar part as an individual it didn't sound all that great, but in the context of the overall music the tones built up form all instruments to a really nice sound. Its surprising how little disortion was in some of those really heavy songs as compared to the heavy bands that came later.