Most Overrated/Underrated Tone

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LP Freak said:
I think a good song and great playing can easily mask average or even bad tone. I’ve always said the same thing when guys make clips of their amps. People seem to gravitate toward guys with better chops vs guys who can’t play as well even through the same amp.
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I would also say sometimes good enough tone can sometimes mask not so good playing or music (at least within reason), good music can mask lesser playing (again within reason), good playing can mask bad music (yngwie is a great example of this). Bottom line, I think it's about the overall package. Everything needs to be at a minimum level, but when certain parts really stand out as being great other parts can sometimes get away within being not as high quality
 
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Overrated: Robben Ford. To the extent anyone likes it ever: Kirk Hammett. Doug Aldrich.

Underrated: Jeff Healey, Nuno on Waiting for the Punchline album.
 
Smashedguitarist said:
au contraire, I constantly tell people. I just don't bring it up in the forum because people love him. I love his rhythm playing. That is the sound.
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Haha I tell people here and in-person. I just get much more agreement/acknowledgement about it in person. Not gonna expect that here lol. I definitely give him credit there though. He had a really good sense of rhythm that often made otherwise uninteresting riffs he wrote actually sound interesting, just really hated those leads and even more so the countless others after that emulated it. I can't deny how hugely influential it was, but in a really bad way in this case imo (just leads I’m taking about)
 
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braintheory said:
Haha I tell people here and in-person. I just get much more agreement/acknowledgement about it in person. Not gonna expect that here lol. I definitely give him credit there though. He had a really good sense of rhythm that often made otherwise uninteresting riffs he wrote actually sound interesting, just really hated those leads and even more so the countless others after that emulated it. I can't deny how hugely influential it was, but in a really bad way in this case imo (just leads I’m taking about)
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This is how i feel 100%. And i feel like it is selfish to feel this way, because others obviously enjoyed his incessant tapping and non melodic solos. But i always think back to the back to the future dance when he is at his parent's prom and he plays that crazy lick that loses the song. Van halen did it in almost every song. When I hear a solo that complements the song or better yet is the climax, it is ecstasy. Eddie left those solos in the dust. And then I get to hear a bunch of others that struggle to stay with the song in favor of fitting as many notes as they can in a solo in under 10 seconds, jesus...
 
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Overrated: Eric Johnson. What teethless, honky, overly smooth mess.

Underrated: Andy Laroque (so clear!), Akira Takasaki (Loudness), nice aggression with clarity, Tom Naumann (Primal Fear).

Naumann's Les Paul into an Engl Savage has that perfect blend of raw saturation, chunk, chewiness.



 
Speeddemon said:
Overrated: Eric Johnson. What teethless, honky, overly smooth mess.

Underrated: Andy Laroque (so clear!), Akira Takasaki (Loudness), nice aggression with clarity, Tom Naumann (Primal Fear).

Naumann's Les Paul into an Engl Savage has that perfect blend of raw saturation, chunk, chewiness.



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Love Naumann but you should have shared this one;

 
Smashedguitarist said:
This is how i feel 100%. And i feel like it is selfish to feel this way, because others obviously enjoyed his incessant tapping and non melodic solos. But i always think back to the back to the future dance when he is at his parent's prom and he plays that crazy lick that loses the song. Van halen did it in almost every song. When I hear a solo that compliments the song or better yet is the climax, it is ecstasy. Eddie left those solos in the dust. And then I get to hear a bunch of others that struggle to stay with the song in favor of fitting as many notes as they can in a solo in under 10 seconds, jesus...
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I’m not so sure if they enjoy it in and of itself so much as maybe they love everything else with VH, so they also love the leads by association or at least it’s not a deal breaker for them. Those leads were definitely no stairway to heaven or comfortably numb in terms of fitting and also being the climactic/epic part of the story of the overall song, but to me rather more like I don’t know what to do here musically so I’ll just try to do something that’s flashy and gimmicky and people will like it because it’s not common right now
 
Smashedguitarist said:

this right here is fucking badass. Saw them live with Suffocation few months back. Absolutely devestating. And the solo actually makes sense. Vitriol is another one with Solos that are useful not just a million fucking notes as fast as you can play them.



Also. I don't get people that don't get Dimebag...
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That first song there has some very cool stuff going on for sure. I have trouble appreciating all things on first listen with any piece of music (especially classical pieces), so will have to hear it a few times. I agree on what you said with solos. Speed alone I don’t think is impressive. It’s the fluidity, coordination, evenness in spacing of notes and clarity in combination with speed that impresses me. That’s why I get impressed with Rick Graham, even though musically he does nothing for me. Plenty of guys physically play more notes per second, but he has the coordination and overall command of the instrument over most others
 
Underrated

Gary Moore’s Strat into a screaming Marshall




Warren DeMartiini , I think this was still a Marshall


This is possibly the SLO
 
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Severely overrated -
Slash....ugh. not a fan
Dime....amazing player but wow that tone was harsh. Love me some Pantera but that tone was "unique"

Severely underrated -
Mick Mars by a country mile. A perfect example of "tone is in the hands" Those Soldanos and Riveras. Crushed
Stryper - say what u want but they always had those mesa boogies singing
 
savant421 said:
Severely overrated -
Slash....ugh. not a fan
Dime....amazing player but wow that tone was harsh. Love me some Pantera but that tone was "unique"

Severely underrated -
Mick Mars by a country mile. A perfect example of "tone is in the hands" Those Soldanos and Riveras. Crushed
Stryper - say what u want but they always had those mesa boogies singing
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Yep,
Dime is an acquired taste; can be quite harsh....but then again, it fit the band's total sound and era well. Cemetary Gates with some Cameron/Jose-modded Marshall ballsy tone wouldn't have worked the way it does now.

And also agreed on Stryper.
Aside perhaps from the slightly cheesy chorus/doubling, one cannot deny this is basically a very good, thick tone:
 
Greazygeo said:
If you were fortunate to see Randy live, you would think differently. The studio recordings, everything sounds bad. I was lucky enough to see him and get right down front getting all stage volume and it was awesome. Gen admission ftw!

Ronnie was great live too…
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This. Listen to Tribute...sounds like a nice loud boosted Marshall to me. Blizzard tone is a given 'bad' tone...that's been known for years. They also had a very limited budget for that album. Diary was much better IMO.
I saw TNT and a larger club in St Paul way back in 89, after the Intuition album came out. They were killer. Roni LeTekro tone? Pretty simple actually. Just get yourself a vintage Boss Flanger, and set it a certain way. I have one here somewhere; that pedal once dialed in made my C+ Coliseum sound like Roni. Lol. A boosted Marshall with that pedal in front is all you need.
 
What category is it, underrated tone? Is it the signature sound of an artist who was not lucky enough to be famous and often mentioned? :D
In recent years, I like the sound of the Benediction Scriptures album the most. Balanced, dense and not over the edge.

 
braintheory said:
I bet there are plenty others besides us. They probably just think it would be sacrilege to acknowledge anything not good about him or other “guitar heroes”
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Couple things though about EVH....you have to remember that in 78, there was no sound like that in rock. It was super bright and aggressive; vs anything else at the time. So now looking back at that tone, there are many other records that have eclipsed that. I like the tone off of VHII best from the VH collection; Fair Warning also.
Smashedguitarist said:

this right here is fucking badass. Saw them live with Suffocation few months back. Absolutely devestating. And the solo actually makes sense. Vitriol is another one with Solos that are useful not just a million fucking notes as fast as you can play them.



Also. I don't get people that don't get Dimebag...
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Dime's tone was horseshit. Fucking terrible 8th grader with his first metal core pedal jerking off to his first playboy terrible. Just garbage. That said, it was HIS tone. Iconic for that amazing Pantera first album. Dime was also a monster player that attacked the instrument like few others.
But sorry, his tone was shit.

Other shit tone would be ANY Nu Metal garbage, FFDP-when I heard their cover of Holy Diver I thought, who's bright idea was it to play all the guitar parts on an 8 string bass with a metal zone in front? Ugh.

Underrated would be Ty in Gretchen, Audley Freed in Cry of Love(first album) and here's one....Leverty in Firehouse. That is some thick boosted SLO tone.
 
braintheory said:
That first song there has some very cool stuff going on for sure. I have trouble appreciating all things on first listen with any piece of music (especially classical pieces), so will have to hear it a few times. I agree on what you said with solos. Speed alone I don’t think is impressive. It’s the fluidity, coordination, evenness in spacing of notes and clarity in combination with speed that impresses me. That’s why I get impressed with Rick Graham, even though musically he does nothing for me. Plenty of guys physically play more notes per second, but he has the coordination and overall command of the instrument over most others
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You lose me a bit with your Rick Graham appreciation. Nothing against him, but it's all incredibly boring, repetitive technical prowess with no feel/feeling in his playing. It's cool to be a master technician, muscle memory to play accurately but he seems to be just that. Could he play a blues tune? Improv at all? I don't listen to him regularly but from what I've seen he's like a GIT grad who has mastered all the sweeps/scales etc and plays very accurately.
Personally, I take a Gary Moore/Gilmour type who played with 'feel' every time over a super accurate shred type. You can tell when Gary 'digs in' and really attacks the guitar. That's what gets me. Playing with great 'feel' for the instrument, not just repetitive muscle memory stuff with great accuracy. EVH also had that....and all of his leads were improv. Some better than others, and I don't agree that he 'tried to fit as many notes in' .....that award goes to YJM. Lol
 
Racerxrated said:
Couple things though about EVH....you have to remember that in 78, there was no sound like that in rock. It was super bright and aggressive; vs anything else at the time. So now looking back at that tone, there are many other records that have eclipsed that. I like the tone off of VHII best from the VH collection; Fair Warning also.

Dime's tone was horseshit. Fucking terrible 8th grader with his first metal core pedal jerking off to his first playboy terrible. Just garbage. That said, it was HIS tone. Iconic for that amazing Pantera first album. Dime was also a monster player that attacked the instrument like few others.
But sorry, his tone was shit.

Other shit tone would be ANY Nu Metal garbage, FFDP-when I heard their cover of Holy Diver I thought, who's bright idea was it to play all the guitar parts on an 8 string bass with a metal zone in front? Ugh.

Underrated would be Ty in Gretchen, Audley Freed in Cry of Love(first album) and here's one....Leverty in Firehouse. That is some thick boosted SLO tone.
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I never argued that. I give absolute credit about his sound being completely new (regardless if I mention things about the tone that I didn’t like), his rhythm being great, I was just talking about his lead work, which I really didn’t like and more importantly it sadly inspired other to do the same with that noodly gobbly gook way. The guitar world would be a much better place imo if they emulated their leads after more musical players like Gilmour, Rhoads or Friedman where the solos actually enhanced the song and tell a story that can be moving. With those players the solos were sometimes like a song within a song or the highlight of the song

With Dime’s tone I feel there were good and bad things about it and I try to take the good from it as influence, but I get why it’s so love or hate for most
 
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