Jay Mitchell
Fractal Fanatic
This has more to do with the level of professionalism of the player than with anything else. It is a fact that you will never encounter a performance situation in which everything is perfect. There will always be distractions - tiny bandstand, poor stage and/or venue acoustics, other players not playing what you expect to hear at any given time, gear not sounding exactly as you expect it to, etc., etc. A huge part of the skillset that good musicians all acquire is the ability to reliably produce good results in suboptimal performance environments, which is to say, pretty much everywhere you will ever perform. That includes those situations in which you perceive that your "tone" is not exactly what you want it to be.
As for "quality" of tone, that is entirely subjective. It has been my experience, going back to the late 1960s, that it is possible to produce a "good" sound on stage as well as in the audience. The two goals - hearing what you want to hear, and having the audience hear very similar sounds - are not now and have never been mutually exclusive. It does take some time and effort on the part of everyone involved to accomplish those goals, but they are achievable.
With my Axe-Fx/FRFR rig, I can hear exactly what I want to hear on stage, and I can easily see to it that the audience hears the same thing. It still may be the case that my taste does not coincide with that of everyone who is listening, but I know they're hearing basically the same guiitar sound I hear.
As for "quality" of tone, that is entirely subjective. It has been my experience, going back to the late 1960s, that it is possible to produce a "good" sound on stage as well as in the audience. The two goals - hearing what you want to hear, and having the audience hear very similar sounds - are not now and have never been mutually exclusive. It does take some time and effort on the part of everyone involved to accomplish those goals, but they are achievable.
With my Axe-Fx/FRFR rig, I can hear exactly what I want to hear on stage, and I can easily see to it that the audience hears the same thing. It still may be the case that my taste does not coincide with that of everyone who is listening, but I know they're hearing basically the same guiitar sound I hear.