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

[RevDrucifer]

If you grew up in the day when players had some form of non master volume amp a guitar and a cable, tone absolutely is in the hands.
Get a 100 watt nmv Marshall for intance put it on ten hooked up to 2 cabs and see what happens if you never have. Then have a buddy who grew up on these do it…

Yep. I probably said it in this thread already, but I think this whole discussion on tone being in the fingers carried a LOT more weight before we had Mesa’s with endless distortion on them and everything that came after.

Overall it seems there’s two main types of players these days; those who don’t see/care/acknowledge the relationship between fingers and gear and they build their rigs from that POV, where others factor the fingers into it.

IE- I’ve seen the debate on here about playing a Mark IIC+ with a boost or without a boost. I’m on the side (with my shitty little Fractal model) that doesn’t use a boost and don’t feel it’s necessary to make the amp sound how I want it to. But my buddy coming over with his bitchpicker hands sounds like a scratchy gnat playing the exact same guitar/model, so if we’re both jamming through my rig, I put a boost on his input so it doesn’t drive me nuts, he can’t even tell, the whole concept, despite being explained to him for 20 years, has no meaning to him. To him it’s just “You have more distortion than I do, turn it up”

 

[heavision]

IMO yup. And why see that as a bad thing? Do you want your Am chord to sound like everyone else’s Am chord?

If someone is saying: two reasonably competent players, strumming a single Am chord, would be clearly distinguishable from each other, that’s hard to fathom.

If they were playing many notes, improvising or something, sure. But one, single chord? I just don’t see what specifically would make one single strum discernible from another. Unless they used wildly different techniques or something. In which case, of course they’d sound different. But that just seems like a matter of technique.

Now if one had a Twin and the other had a Triple Rec, then yes, very different.

I think it's some from column A, and B. Those that think the player doesn't affect the tone should check this out. Joe Satriani playing a cheap Strat copy, still sounds like Joe to me.

I think the fact that players sound like themselves regardless of what gear they’re using is clearly true. Take for instance EVH on Spanish Fly and Eruption. Both 100% Eddie Van Halen, two wildly different gear situations.

Let’s talk semantics. I’d submit that in those two songs what we’re recognizing is his style, techniques, chops etc. But I’d describe EVH’s tone as: Frankenstein, 68 plexi, variac, 6CA7s and so on.

We’re on the same page philosophically, we just use different words.

 

[braintheory]

If someone is saying: two reasonably competent players, strumming a single Am chord, would be clearly distinguishable from each other, that’s hard to fathom.

If they were playing many notes, improvising or something, sure. But one, single chord? I just don’t see what specifically would make one single strum discernible from another. Unless they used wildly different techniques or something. In which case, of course they’d sound different. But that just seems like a matter of technique.

Now if one had a Twin and the other had a Triple Rec, then yes, very different.

I think the fact that players sound like themselves regardless of what gear they’re using is clearly true. Take for instance EVH on Spanish Fly and Eruption. Both 100% Eddie Van Halen, two wildly different gear situations.

Let’s talk semantics. I’d submit that in those two songs what we’re recognizing is his style, techniques, chops etc. But I’d describe EVH’s tone as: Frankenstein, 68 plexi, variac, 6CA7s and so on.

We’re on the same page philosophically, we just use different words.

Agreed. A simple A chord can be played with different types of attack or articulations, played as rolled or block chords, but this again isn’t tone, which roughly still would stay the same. The other guys just aren’t distinguishing

Those definitely seem to be some key ingredients to his sound as well as the 20w GB/JBL D120F, his pickups and that super obnoxious plate reverb. If he didn’t have that part I would’ve liked his sound so much more haha. It’s like the sonic equivalent of too much cologne or make up