How simple is Tone Matching?

[John Goebel]

Apologies, as I’m sure this has been answered many times. I’m curious how easy it is to copy a guitar tone from an artist recording. I’m just a guitar hobbyist, but I love to play. I’ve found that playing is really the only thing I’m interested in though. I’ve tried really hard to get into amps and effects settings, but I just give up. What I want is basically to cheat. I know that’s heresy to a lot of tone people, but I just want to find a magic machine that will give me, at least close to, the tone of the songs I’m putting time into learning. Is the Axe FX that machine? Thanks in advance for any replies.

 

[MrGuitarabuse]

Here is nice little tutorial from Cooper on tone match

 

[unix-guy]

Keep in mind a tone match is NOT matching the sound of another guitarist, is for matching the amp only.

It's really just a fancy EQ. For best results, you want to have dialed in a pretty similar amp sound already.

Any effects would still need to be handled by you.

 

[Moke]

Apologies, as I’m sure this has been answered many times. I’m curious how easy it is to copy a guitar tone from an artist recording. I’m just a guitar hobbyist, but I love to play. I’ve found that playing is really the only thing I’m interested in though. I’ve tried really hard to get into amps and effects settings, but I just give up. What I want is basically to cheat. I know that’s heresy to a lot of tone people, but I just want to find a magic machine that will give me, at least close to, the tone of the songs I’m putting time into learning. Is the Axe FX that machine? Thanks in advance for any replies.

That's what guys like me are for....LOL..

 

[John Goebel]

Thanks for the information. I understand that other effects (reverb, chorus, etc..)have to be handled by me. I feel like I can dial those to taste well enough. It’s the gain and eq type stuff that melts my brain. From doing more deep diving on the forums, I think I’m leaning towards taking the plunge. Thanks again for the replies.

 

[Rex]

Thanks for the information. I understand that other effects (reverb, chorus, etc..)have to be handled by me. I feel like I can dial those to taste well enough. It’s the gain and eq type stuff that melts my brain. From doing more deep diving on the forums, I think I’m leaning towards taking the plunge. Thanks again for the replies.

I think you owe it to yourself to get comfortable dialing in amp gain and EQ. That’s been part of electric guitar playing for more than half a century.

 

[John Goebel]

I think you owe it to yourself to get comfortable dialing in amp gain and EQ. That’s been part of electric guitar playing for more than half a century.

I know I should, but I’ve been playing for over ten years. I’ve come to the the realization that although I keep improving my technical skills, I’m just not creative. I’ll be playing other people’s song for my whole life. That’s ok though. I like doing it, and with my schedule I’m just playing for myself anyway.

 

[Recon24]

As others have mentioned, it’s basically just EQ. If you don’t have a decent grasp on how to get in the general ballpark without tonematching, you might get a similar sound but the feel/sustain/response/etc. will likely be wildly off (depending on the sound in question and your preferences, that may or may not be an issue). And that’s without even beginning to get into the FX that are integral to many tones.

If you really don’t want to tweak at all but want album-sounding tones, there’s a few well-respected people around this forum that make fantastic professional-sounding presets for specific songs and artists.

Alternatively, if you’re open to maybe readjusting that preset-per-song mindset and simplifying, there’s quite a few different amps in the unit that’ll get you good general-use sounds with zero tweaking. The Friedman’s at default are great Marshall tones, the Matchless does Vox-style beautifully at default, the various FAS Modern types will cover most metal tones at default, etc.