Guitar or Amp - which affects tone the most?

not_the_dj

Amp, but as that's sat over there and the guitar is slung around your neck and in your hands that's the bit that most people focus on.

ICBM

telehack said:

Once interesting thing is to listen to a piece of music and try to guess what guitar was used. It can be harder than you would think.

Even harder with which amp was used.

The exceptions are when something particularly distinctive is involved, like the in-between sound on a Strat (although there are other guitars that can get close enough to fool people) or the… er… (trying to think of an amp example, and failing).

streethawk

If you're recording something and have a specific sound in mind, everything becomes magnified. Compression, mics, mic placement etc. No way you could switch guitars and expect the same results, they're certainly not interchangeable. Amps just seem more tweakable... I'm thinking more from a clean sound perspective and have limited experience to be honest.

Sassafras

The core sound of the guitar is more important for me. Most amps can be tweaked to sound the way you want them to sound. That's not so easy to do with a guitar.

A great guitar will sound and play well through a mediocre amp, a crappy guitar will always sound crappy no matter what it's played through.

57Deluxe

The Player...

Lewligan

Sassafras said:

A great guitar will sound and play well through a mediocre amp, a crappy guitar will always sound crappy no matter what it's played through.

Will have to disagree there.

You play a £2000 guitar through a £80 piece of shit amp, and it's gonna sound like, well... a piece of shit.

Then go and play a £80 (second hand) Epi through a £2000 amp... I'd bet my life on that sounding a LOT better.

Amp for me.

ESBlonde

A good amp/speaker will allow the character of the guitar to come through. Once you introduce distortion into the equation then things get fuzzy :-0
A great amplifier puts it's stamp on the sound produced but above a certain level the law of diminishing returns kicks in along the whole chain. Modest guitar and amps are very acceptable for pub gigs. Studio work might make you select more carefully though.

Chalky

Must agree with @Sassafras - the first thing I noticed when I bought my Redplate amp on here is how it took no prisoners with my cheaper guitars - a Gibson 335 through it sounded great but the cheap 335 wannabes sounded...well, cheap and dull. Same result when comparing Strats, Teles, and so on. @Lewligan - that cheap Epi would sound rubbish through it.

The transparency of the amp also means it shows up all my badly played notes too :-S

Sassafras

Lewligan said:

Sassafras said:

A great guitar will sound and play well through a mediocre amp, a crappy guitar will always sound crappy no matter what it's played through.

Will have to disagree there.

You play a £2000 guitar through a £80 piece of shit amp, and it's gonna sound like, well... a piece of shit.

Then go and play a £80 (second hand) Epi through a £2000 amp... I'd bet my life on that sounding a LOT better.

Amp for me.

You've shifted the goalposts a bit there. I was talking about mediocre amps. Obviously, a shitty amp won't enhance the sound of anything, although I can't remember the last time I played an amp that was so bad that it degraded the sound of a good guitar to the point where it sounded awful.

ICBM

Sassafras said:

I can't remember the last time I played an amp that was so bad that it degraded the sound of a good guitar to the point where it sounded awful.

I can. It was last week.

paulmapp8306

I think you need to match both.

A shit guitar through a great amp will sound shit as the amp will show its flaws. A great guitar will sound shit through a shit amp, because the amp isn't capable of a great sound.

So, you get the best from an amp with a guitar that matches it's quality. Up the level of guitar and it's wasted (tonally. Playability is another matter). Lower the guitar quality and the amp won't sound it's best.

So.

Shut amp with shit guitar
Average amp with average guitar
Good Amp with good guitar
Great amp with great guitar.

impmann

ICBM;663514" said:

Sassafras said:I can't remember the last time I played an amp that was so bad that it degraded the sound of a good guitar to the point where it sounded awful.





I can. It was last week.

Yep me too.

Sassafras

What was it, a Micro Terror?

Clarky

anything that has the ability to process or distort the original signal will have the greatest tonal impact...

that'll be amp and fx / rack preamp

everything else [guitar / pups / cab / speaker type etc] will have tonal impacts of their own to greater or lesser degrees, but nothing like the preamp and fx can have

ICBM

Sassafras said:

What was it, a Micro Terror?

Yes, but in fairness I would also say the...

Marshall Class 5
Epiphone Valve Junior (Mk1, the later ones aren't quite so bad)
Fender Champion 600
and not least the Crate Powerblock

... can all make any guitar sound shit.

Sassafras

Agreed on the Marshall Class 5, a horrible raspy thing.

I had a version 3 Valve Jnr that wasn't too bad, ended up giving it to my brother because it was just taking up valuable space in my tiny bijou flat.

I didn't know the Champion 600 was awful, I've never tried it but I did quite like the idea of having one.

midiglitch

The question was "which affects tone the most?"

The answer is the amp.

The guitar doesn't affect the tone, it creates it.  Everything that follows shapes (id est "affects") that tone.

It's a bit like asking "which affects a cars performance the most; the engine or the wheels...?"

As for me I'm not using an amp at all at the moment, so the answer is 'cab emulator', 'eq pedal' and 'distortion pedal' (when that gets switched on.). Which kind of equates to speaker/cab choice, amp voicing and eq settings, and gain on the amp.

In other words, the player has the biggest effect on the tone, because he or she has made those choices.

Icbm was right on the money when he said he tries to make all amps sound the same.  At the end of the day we are all using all of these tools to try and create a tone that we hear in our heads.

So yes... Its the player.  Just like a car has no performance without a driver, a guitar rig has no tone without a player

shaunm

The reason I thought about this is because of the Phil X demos he does on YouTube.

He basically shows of (his playing) the most stunning rare and desirable guitars going and highlights them.

I had sod all better to do last night than to watch 4/5 in a row and what I noticed was that other than the large gulfs, a Strat to a Les Paul, there was not a large amount of difference. An SG was very similar to a 335 and a PRS sounded like a Jr.

He had a few amps he was going through and that was the thing that actually changed the tone significantly. I don't mean gulfs (a fender clean to Mesa distortion) but a driven tone of a 76 Marshall to a modded Plexi sounded different. A crunchy vox to a fender Vibrolux sounded different.

johnswiss

For me a good amp will and does show the differences between guitars. But I dont use effects, just a bit of light crunch, a weber blue dog speaker and for me the all important trim pot to get each guitar hitting the sweet spot at input. Happy days.

siraxeman

The actual correct answer is the amp. Anyone saying different is just plain rong.