Why Tone Matters (or should) to a Guitar Player

When contemplating the importance of tone, there are a number of predictable yet valid responses. Thinking more globally (about the band and or your audience) one might intuitively recognize that good tone contributes to how good the band sounds. It ideally allows your playing to be heard in the mix without being overly loud or obnoxious and when playing covers, can help those songs come across as more convincing or authentic thereby increasing your credibility with the audience. In many cases, its actually tone that can make or break a song, yet the casual listener wouldn't even realize it. Something that might sometimes be overlooked or misunderstood by others is that to a guitar player, better tone makes you a better player. Guitar tone is important to the guitar player even if nobody else cares or appreciates it, and they often don't. Here's a common scenario to support my claim:

As a gigging musician, I cannot tell you how many times I've played in bands where the drummer doesn't know how to tune his drums or when his heads need to be replaced. Or when the bass player is playing through some old muddy-sounding rig and hasn't changes his strings in a year and doesn't realize that even a bass needs to be intonated every once in a while. And what takes the cake is that the vast majority of gigs, house sound or hired, results in the sound man spending all of two minutes sticking an old 57 in front of your amp (usually in the wrong position relative to the speaker), getting a level and then doing absolutely nothing to attempt to ensure that the tone coming out of the FOH/PA system is anything close to the tone coming from your amp. You're lucky if your leads are even heard throughout the night, yet your use of a boost to ensure that they are invariably irritates that same sound man. Yet with all of those things working against you, you envelop yourself in your own sound in your own space on stage, and hearing what's coming out of your rig is what inspires you to new heights, or limits you to mediocrity. Heck, your clean boost isn't even really intended to goose your signal through the sound system as much as it ensures that YOU hear it and offers you that little bit of additional gain and sustain that allows the seamless connection of mind to hands to guitar to amp and back. It's great tone that can ultimately lead to your very best playing.

Guitarists are some of the most tormented by G.A.S., or Gear Acquisition Syndrome. We're always looking for that piece of equipment that will bring our sound and ultimately our playing to a new level. And while generally I agree that practice is important, if you're not sounding good, you're probably not playing to your potential. Heck just the other night I was playing a gig and had a 12AX7 preamp tube go south on me. I basically had no clean tone and you guessed it, not only did the clean parts not sound right tonaly, but I could tell that the alteration of my clean sound negatively impacted my ability to play those parts as well as I normally would have. It neither sounded not felt right and it was a fight all night to get through those parts. Just look at any field and you'll find professionals that need the appropriate tools to help them achieve their best work.

As a guitar player, you should be spending a lot of time finding tone that inspires you; and remember that tone comes from both your equipment as well as your hands. Its not necessarily about copying the sound of others as it is finding something that inspires you, and when you find that you will also find that even your covers songs become more convincing. With the right tone and technique (the hands piece of the tone equation), you can cover those high gain triple rectifier songs on a Marshall rig just fine; or even with a decent distortion pedal in front of your favorite clean amp. I'll go out on a limb here to and say that while I am fortunate enough to have some very high-end gear, I believe it is possible to get good tone out of some of the most modest even digital gear (because I have done so), but more on that in a future post. Certainly there are no rules about what should or should not inspire you.

When you do find the right tone, you'll get even more satisfaction out of playing guitar, and will be playing better than ever before. If there's anything I can do to help you get there, than post a comment and I'll do my best to try!