“Tone is in the fingers” my ass. (RANT)

H

heavision

Member
Does this phrase bother anyone else?

I broached this topic on another online forum and was surprised at the response.

* * * *

I gotta get this off my chest. Lemme get on the soap box for a minute.

When we’re discussing shit like GBs vs V30s, Strats vs Les Pauls, or whatever and someone says “it’s not the gear, tone is in the fingers” I find that annoying. As if the tonal differences between two types of speakers are an illusion.

They may elaborate on how the way one holds the pick, vibrato, right and left hand dynamics etc massively affect tone. And I agree completely. But I’d call that technique, touch, a player’s style, I would not call that “tone.”

To me tone is something inherent to the rig, its potential. Great players harboring great technique, touch, talent can coax a great tone out of a given rig but the potential tone must be there, in the rig, first. So when someone says “yeah sure gear is part of it but tone is in the fingers, because they have the greatest impact overall.” I’d say I agree that fingers can have the greatest impact on tone. And it is precisely because they are two different things that fingers can have such a huge impact.

When someone says they’re a tone-chaser I never assume they mean that they are chasing something in their fingers.

And so on and so forth.

Wutchall think?
 
PLX said:
Maybe I was thinking of "groove".

:unsure:
Click to expand...
Groove comes solely from one’s gear, tone is all in the fingers, and guitars are just there to look cool and for whichever one has the most striking looking top. That’s what counts. You also get extra street cred for an ebony board (clearly that’s better by default). Nothing else matters for affecting playing or tone. End thread
 
Most guys on this forum don’t subscribe to “tone is in the fingers” and it makes sense since this is a gear forum after all lol. The problem is most guys are too shallow or short sighted to discern between tone and playing itself, so they just group it together as a singular package and if is good to them then everything about it must be good (the tone and playing). This is big error in their ways imo, but most guys on this forum don’t have that problem

What I’m working on convincing is about actually judging guitars (which is still a musical instrument for those that don’t know lol) on their core tone rather than just how they look or play or how perfect the fretwork is or how conveniently the knobs or switches are placed (this one is laughable). You’d think tone would be the main criteria to judge a guitar on lol, yet that only seems to be the priority on other gear pieces (amps, speakers, pedals, pickups, etc)
 
It depends on the context, if you have the correct tools for the job, that argument makes sense to a reasonable degree.

Trying to get strat tones from a les paul, or fender twin tones from a 5150 isn't achievable by technique. People can also split hairs over 5 different strats from from 5 american builders, with specs that are nearly identical, all of which sound like a strat.
 
See how Jimmy puts the Les Paul right over his balls? That’s where the tone comes from, it’s the tone zone

8B3F2C8E-D5E3-452E-B942-6BF2034A15A1.jpeg
 
John Suhr tells the story of many years back walking into a studio and hearing EVH
doing his thing from one of the control rooms. He could tell immediately it was Ed,
and this was at the height of all of the post EVH shred masters.

Walks in to see him playing an early Steinberger prototype through a couple stomps
and then DI into the board.

Also said the strings were a mile off the fretboard and filthy.

:rock:
 
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