Request For Guidance Of Cliff & Also Forum Members About Signature Guitar Tone

Rotti said:
Dime had a lot of mysteries going on in his signal chain, but yes, he made it work for him.
How much better did he sound once he made the move to Krank with Damageplan though? Lots, lots better.
This coming from a huge Pantera fan with a CFH tat to prove it.
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The parametric EQ was certainly a "secret" weapon for his tone for sure. I personally didn't care for the change in his tone in the later years though, just lost a bit of what made it unique. Still knew it was him playing, as you would regardless of the amp, but the CHF and especially the Vulgar tones where by far the most unique
 
Yeah, they definitely did stand out. You knew exactly who was playing. But I guess I should've thrown an "IMO" in there. His Damageplan tones were just SOOO DAMN BEEFY!

I think an important aspect everyone seems to be forgetting is how these great tones sit in a mix.
When I think of "great tone," I think of a ten-mile-wide bedroom tone that would absolutely suck in a mix (unless everything else is designed to be overly thin, as is the case with a few artists I can think of... and it still doesn't work well for them IMO).
Take some of your favorite tones and iso them out of the mix. The results usually ain't very pretty.
 
Absolutely. Context is everything in music. Unless you plan on making albums of solo guitar tracks, the mix and the song determine the tone more than anything. The idea of just one static signature sound will get very boring very quickly. The beauty of the Axe is its flexibility. There's a tone for any occasion in there. Why settle for just one. That's why I come back to the unique style of the player. Tones and gear will always change with the times. It's the player that remains constant.
 
FractalAudio said:
Tone is in the hands. Tone is also in the gear. Everything in this society has become polarized to that point that even things like this have become an either/or. Life isn't black or white. I blame politicians. But I digress....
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Although this is not a recent, as a New Englander, you surely have been exposed to the Patriot rhetoric the area enjoys so much, damn those Loyalists!
 
Rotti said:
:roll
Show me your killer tone hands with a Peavey Rage.
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My freshman year at Boston University (1987), a guy down the hallway from me in the dorm (Warren Towers), named Dave was to play in the AETT talent show. He came to me and asked if I had a particular CD he could listen to, to learn a song for the show, which was in less than two hours. I played the song for him a few times and he figured it out very quickly, he then ran through the solo a few times and left. I was sure he was going to crash and burn with so little effort and time, so I went to go see him play, but he not only pulled it off but the crowd went wild. He used a Peavey Bandit and a Rat pedal. Later when I congratulated him on a great job, and inquired how he had gotten so good, he told me his neighbor was Danny Spitz of Anthrax. Dave eventually left BU and I have no idea what happened to him, but that POS Peavey didn't hold him back one bit. I've often wondered if he made it in music in any fashion.
 
I wonder if we might be confusing things. Being a skillful musician is one thing, playing the "right" notes at the "right" time in the "right" way.
Tone is timbre. Your buddy might've nailed that song and played some epic shit. I seriously doubt the tone was as raging. I might also question the ability of the audience to dissect tone (as always).
Or serendipitous combo of pickups, rat, bandit... whatever... but I doubt it. But hey, I wasn't there.
 
The guitar tones on those classic Ramones and Misfits albums were certainly awful, as was the overall production, by most any standard, but I certainly couldn't imagine those albums with different tones

Doyle's crappy buzzsaw worked as well in that context as Steve Jone's massively tracked Bollock's tone did.

No one is probably trying to cop Doyle's tone I"m sure, while who can say they didn't want Stevie's massive tone, yet both are timeless classics from classic albums that influenced literally millions of guitarist over the years.
 
luke said:
People looking to create a unique tone usually do so at their own peril. You've never heard of someone because of their tone, you always learn of an artist via their songs. Only after the songs grab the listener does anyone bother to dissect the "tone", and the truth is, even with a different tone, the songs would still be great.
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I agree that the song is important but there are guitarists with instantly recognizable tone. If Santana was playing on a song I never heard before, I'd recognize it was him in a few notes. It all starts with the soul thru to the fingers then the gear. A recent post here on the forum shows a tech playing Bonamassa's rig but it doesn't sound like when Joe plays it. Trick is to find a tone that helps you connect to the music, you'll find your signature tone.
 
brianv4 said:
I agree that the song is important but there are guitarists with instantly recognizable tone. If Santana was playing on a song I never heard before, I'd recognize it was him in a few notes. It all starts with the soul thru to the fingers then the gear. A recent post here on the forum shows a tech playing Bonamassa's rig but it doesn't sound like when Joe plays it. Trick is to find a tone that helps you connect to the music, you'll find your signature tone.
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Too often, people confuse "tone" with "style."
 
i have a very distinctive tone. what i do is, i downtune the b and the d strings 15 cents or so. the rest of the magic comes from the pignose in the empty dumpster.
 
Gamedojo said:
IMO, its a paradox.

One can only create a truly unique guitar tone by not trying to do so. The artists we all exemplify as having a unique sound that makes them instantly recognizable never approached the instrument in this context, but rather simply made music and through the process of being good at the instrument created their unique sound.

if you approach it trying to create your own sound as the goal, you'll have no depth/meaning to the tone and therefor, the sound would be unique, but uninteresting to an outside listener.
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This is spot on. It happens from your own hands, in a unique situation and becomes inspirational. Be yourself. You'll know it when it happens.
 
FractalAudio said:
Tone is in the hands. Tone is also in the gear. Everything in this society has become polarized to that point that even things like this have become an either/or. Life isn't black or white. I blame politicians. But I digress....
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Where as I would have managed to express this exact sentiment in a short 12 paragraph diatribe you managed to do it in like 2-3 pretty complete sentences.

But yeah man, I don't understand the whole notion we seem to have where if someone does something different that it's wrong or that just because you have two different sides to an issue that one is necessarily righteous. Most of the time it's neither right nor wrong regardless of what the hell you are talking about and there's a million different ways to screw something up and another million to do it successfully.
 
I imagine the guitar tone as a pretty girl and music as her fitness lover man, if they have some outstanding points with one another. they can have the expectation of a really good result, So I think they're not two divided matter with one another, they need each other like I said in order to have a great result.

just give you a musical life example, I wrote and recorded 90% of my demo guitar lines on the album with Amplitube 3.9, but when I purchased the Axe-Fx ll and then played again those stuff I faced our music turned into the right track in terms of feeling, clarity, and the notes which had popped-out from inside of me, they could exposed themselves in a way that I could feel myself on the notes !.

So in my humble opinion and some other guys who mentioned here and also Cliff, we need both of them not only the hands !, metaphorically if you got a huge budget you can buy a nice penthouse in SoHo district in NYC as sound engineering like Richard Chycki N Andy Wallace !
 
I, like most, spent most of my learning time playing other guitarists stuff. As time went on, I found many things I did not want to keep practicing (endless shredding, etc.) I finally got to a point where I listened to the music, and played MY version of solos. Now I have a style I can say is entirely me (yes, with all those influences down there in the sub-basements of wherever music comes from.) So while I like doing a *bit* of tone chasing when I hear something I like, I will get it close and 'leave it alone'.

Because: No matter the gear, I always sound like me. To say put tone on only one aspect like amp, guitar, cable, pedal, fingers is like saying I won the marathon because my pinkie toe was REALLY in shape.

To the original question:
I would say there are many 'signature' tones. Asking someone else how to get one sort of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?
 
Up until a year or so ago I spent far too much time and money chasing that "unique" tone that would be mine. guitars, pick ups, pedals, , tubes , hell even leads all swapped in search of that elusive tone


It just hit me one day that I didint really care anymore. I just wanted tones I liked and enjoyed using and that sounded good in a band mix .

I found personally I was thinking about it too much. If I just dialed in a tone I liked, that worked with the band , then I'd be happy ,have fun and play well and that is what's important to me .

lets face it, exacklty what can you do to a guitar tone these days to be Unique ? its all been explored . I rather just sound good
 
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Hyper Planet said:
actually when I got to know FAS company I realized that I can attain to this goal in a professional way, it's very modern and very versatile tool, it has so much more possibility than to the real AMP CAB,... etc, all we know this points already !
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You are right about the versatile stuff but having 200 amps and tons of cabs doesn't make finding your unique tone easier. I would say having all those options makes it more difficult to find your own tone. In my opinion it's better to choose one amp and stick with that amp to find your unique tone. Gear is important but hands, style and creativity are much more important.
 
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