Is tone in your hands or equipments?

Lestratcaster

A large proportion is in your hands I think, like 80%. Then the remaining is the guitar and equipment you use. You can't replicate skin genetics and touch, no matter how hard you try. Ask 10 people to play a certain phrase and they'll all sound different. Maybe 1-2 will sound similar but everyone's got different touch.

scrumhalf

I think it varies.

For a new player who may not yhet have adopted or adapted to a certain style I think the equipment counts for more. After a while when things become comfortable then I think the player contributes more than the equipment.

Th4fonz

If tone wasnt in the gear then no one would buy customshop guitars boutique pedals boutqiue or reissue vintage amps, or vintage guitars.  Any artist is going to sound the same to a degree no matter what they play, but the tone is going to better with the better playing and sounding gear.

I dont know what % is in the hands and gear though as also I think it comes down to the style you play.  Its alot harder to squeeze out some great lead tone playing clean than say high gain which can cover alot of mistakes.

octatonic

Welcome to the forum, @arayadis.

robinbowes

Th4fonz said:

If tone wasnt in the gear then no one would buy customshop guitars boutique pedals boutqiue or reissue vintage amps, or vintage guitars.  Any artist is going to sound the same to a degree no matter what they play, but the tone is going to better with the better playing and sounding gear.

I dont know what % is in the hands and gear though as also I think it comes down to the style you play.  Its alot harder to squeeze out some great lead tone playing clean than say high gain which can cover alot of mistakes.

Yes they would. People *think* tone is in the gear, so they buy the gear. They think if they had the same guitar, effects, amp as their fave guitarist, they'll sound the same. They won't, clearly.

R.

DaevidJ

It's all in the brain... 

ICBM

No-one can get a tone like for example Steve Vai on For The Love Of God with a Strat and a Fender Twin and just their hands. Not even Vai.

robinbowes

ICBM said:

No-one can get a tone like for example Steve Vai on For The Love Of God with a Strat and a Fender Twin and just their hands. Not even Vai.

This raises the distinction between "sound" and "tone".

For me, "tone" is more personal, and includes those tell-tale signs that let you identify a guitarist in relatively few notes.

Th4fonz

ICBM said:

Steve Vai on For The Love Of God with a Strat and a Fender Twin and metal zone MT2

I edited that for you @ICBM

thegummy

robinbowes said:

Th4fonz said:

If tone wasnt in the gear then no one would buy customshop guitars boutique pedals boutqiue or reissue vintage amps, or vintage guitars.  Any artist is going to sound the same to a degree no matter what they play, but the tone is going to better with the better playing and sounding gear.

I dont know what % is in the hands and gear though as also I think it comes down to the style you play.  Its alot harder to squeeze out some great lead tone playing clean than say high gain which can cover alot of mistakes.

Yes they would. People *think* tone is in the gear, so they buy the gear. They think if they had the same guitar, effects, amp as their fave guitarist, they'll sound the same. They won't, clearly.

R.

That's exactly it. Some people believe it, doesn't make it true.

I think it's kind of like when people buy all kinds of fitness gear and supplements etc., it's easier to buy stuff than exercise or practice.

Obviously gear does affect tone big time but it just makes it sound different. I wouldn't be surprised if there were people on an endless loop of buying gear thinking that will finally make them happy with their playing but it's futile.

ICBM

robinbowes said:

This raises the distinction between "sound" and "tone".

It's both - assuming you're following the guitarist definition of 'tone' as being what a classical musician would call timbre. You could maybe get close-ish to the 'tone' if you roll the guitar tone control down and EQ the amp right, but you'll never get the compression and sustain.

robinbowes said:

For me, "tone" is more personal, and includes those tell-tale signs that let you identify a guitarist in relatively few notes.

That's technique mostly - phrasing, pick attack, vibrato etc. That's what makes a player sound like themselves far more than the actual tone does, even for a player with a very distinctive tone like Brian May.

thegummy said:

Obviously gear does affect tone big time but it just makes it sound different. I wouldn't be surprised if there were people on an endless loop of buying gear thinking that will finally make them happy with their playing but it's futile.

Exactly - tone and technique are two different things.

What confuses it is that different players do actually produce different tone (timbre) from the same equipment set the same. *Some* of it is in the hands.

pintspiller

I mostly sound the same on anything I lift. 

However, i generally dial something similar into the different amps to start with.

Cols

I don’t understand the negative comments in this thread.  The OP has made some videos on subjects very relevant to guitars - as well as the above, some gear reviews and a piece on speed picking - and posted links to them as his first contributions to the forum.  What’s the problem?

For my tuppence worth - it’s a combination of everything.  If gear played no part Jimmy Page would sound just as awesome playing air guitar as he does with a Les Paul and a Marshall Plexi.  Similarly, if fingers played no part I could sound just like anyone provided I had their rig.

gringopig

.

richardhomer

gringopig said:

My opinion: That video was torture. Especially the bit where they all play a crappy Hendrix bit on an out of tune Strat. Oh, also the crappy bit where they all get a woo woo sound and play note for note Gary Moore pish. That was the worst and It was actually painful to listen to. 
If that's 'tone' then I don't want it thank you. 

If you want to know the answer to the question posed in the video, stick a guitar into a clean amp and get them to improvise some melodic lines for 5 minutes each. Any guitar will do but no clipping.

Harsh - but probably fair....

High gain sounds mask the differences between guitars and players - cleaner sounds allow you to hear dynamic nuances which tend to reveal players’ characters - but none of the players in the video ‘really’ had much personality - they haven’t yet developed the touch/phrasing/dynamic sophistication that experience brings.

If you take (say) early Knopfler, 70s era Clapton and Richard Thompson - they each used very similar tones - but their playing was instantly identifiable. I subscribe to the view that the equipment gives a basic ‘sound’ - the more skilled player sculpts that into something distinctly their own....

Philtre

Is tone in your hands or equipments?

It's in my knob. My tone knob.

darthed1981

Philtre said:

Is tone in your hands or equipments?

It's in my knob. My tone knob.

I was about to say..

What is my tone like if I have my equipment in my hand?

Wolfetone

Impossible to say from the clips as they were recorded with a child's video camera by the looks of it.

Voxman

robinbowes said:

ICBM said:

No-one can get a tone like for example Steve Vai on For The Love Of God with a Strat and a Fender Twin and just their hands. Not even Vai.

This raises the distinction between "sound" and "tone".

For me, "tone" is more personal, and includes those tell-tale signs that let you identify a guitarist in relatively few notes.

Nope, that's skill, technique and touch. Its why Hendrix sounded like Hendrix whether he was playing a Strat, SG or Flying V. But you raise an interesting point in talking about sound and tone.  Perhaps the reason there's always such fervent debate and disagreements on this is because different folk have different definitions as to what tone is.  For me, just as for @ICBM, tone is the sound you hear.  But its the skill technique and touch of each player in how they use that underlying sound.  

It's kind of like painting. The fundamental colours comes from the paint ...red, yellow, vermilion, sepia etc. If you got 10 artists to paint exactly the same picture with the same colours in each section, ie no mixing, you'd still distinguish them by brush styles.  Those differences come from their hands, but the underlying colours can't be changed...no matter how brilliant the artist they cant make yellow magically become red. 

I know, youll say but artists mix colours...but thats the same as a guitarist mixing eq and effects and vol and tone control settings. The thickness layer of paint is how hard or gently we hit the strings, the artists choice of brush is our choice of guitar, the artists choice of canvass material is like our amps, the choice of brush v palette knife v smudging cloth is like a plectrum v bottleneck or fingers...different tools to spread our colour ie our sound in different ways.  

How the artist uses all these things comes from the artist themselves.  Just as how we all use our tools differently.  

So I suppose it's all about perspective and interpretation. I'm absolutely from the school that tone is from the gear ...no one can make a strat through a clean Fender Blackface sound like a Les Paul through a cranked Marshall set to 11.  For me that mix of guitars and amp is tone.  But how that tone is used...that's from the guitarists touch and skill.  

But then we might actually all be saying the same thing, but using different interpretations of language, which is where all the debate, argument and confusion might be coming from. 

MagicPigDetective

Tone is in the andies, at the end of your armies