Favourite clean sounds on record

RocknRollDave

MagicPigDetective said:

The Smiths - Meat is Murder LP. Johnny's clean tone all over this record, sometimes with tasteful chorus,  whether as the main component is Headmaster Ritual, or as arpeggio's and embellishments over acoustics such as in I want the one I can't have, rockabilly style on Nowhere Fast, Nile Rogers style funk of Barbarism Begins at Home. 

Oooh yes! That little descending run in I Want The One I Can't Have at 2:04 is great.

LastMantra

Too many to choose from, but the first thing that comes to mind is Frusciante's work with the chillies.

Maybe a bit of John squire. 

Dave gilmour. If a bit of phaser etcs allowed then sure.

Fender amps are popular for clean sounds generally but I think their guitars could be too?

Boromedic

Metallica's clean tones are ace, especially once they dialled in the Roland JC120s on Ride, Master, Justice and beyond.....

Peter Bucks clean tones are brilliant right from day one through to their breakup.

Loads of others but they're my main two.

kennedydream1980

Grace Jones - Slave to the Rhythm 

Hootsmon

That Wicked Games Strat thing is quite nice...

Bellycaster

I have many but Sour Times by Portishead is very haunting and never gets old.

wesker123

Razorlight - In the morning. 

richardhomer

Paul Buchanan’s Telecaster on the Blue Nile’s ‘Let’s Go Out Tonight’.

digitalkettle

richardhomer said:

Paul Buchanan’s Telecaster on the Blue Nile’s ‘Let’s Go Out Tonight’.

Sublime…can always rely on @richardhomer for a Blue Nile mention!

StageStruck

Christie/The Tremeloes electric 12 string on Yellow River

Big Star - September Girls

Although it's generally got tape delay/echo, Hank Marvin's guitar tones are usually fairly clean and deserving of a mention here

hollywoodrox

digitalkettle said:

I remember watching this on TOTP in 79 & thinking wow 

hollywoodrox

As @kebabkid said ,all the 80s greats Jay Graydon, Michael Landau ,Michael Thompson,Paul Jackson Junior ,Ray Parker Junior ,Dan Huff ,Steve Lukather ,Dean Parks  all phenomenal and contributed so much to the sounds we heard on radio in the 80s 

joeW

For me - hard to beat George Benson for great clean tone. His articulation is phenomenal, even at silly speeds.  Also love Wes for the smooth attack from his technique. 

scrumhalf

Almost any clean tone on anything by The Hellecasters is a good 'un. 

CaseOfAce

That neck middle inbetween single coil sound on Madonna's Lucky Star...

Madonna - Lucky Star (Official Video) - YouTube

For me it's the benchmark tone for that type of funk playing (well.. that and anything by Nile Rogers!).

CountryDave

https://youtu.be/e80qhyovOnA

Mike Oldfield’s strat on Moonlight Shadow.

Cryptid

Not strictly on 'record' but I marvel at Bill's tender touch and Rhodes-like tone on this:

springhead

Steve Cropper on pretty much anything but Try A Little Tenderness especially. Lovely clean fills over the long intro section and then those chord stabs he plays are one of the best sounding recorded guitars ever I think. Very simple little stabs, Tele straight into a Harvard or whatever he was using by then. Lovely. 

earwighoney

Springywheel

The first dire straits album for sure. 

The clean stuff on Images and Words by Dream Theatre, particularly the arpeggiated chords on Pull Me Under 

Tin Pan Alley by SRV