Most Overrated/Underrated Tone

Racerxrated said:
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
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There are so many amazing players out there that can’t improvise to save their life and I even know a few very bad players that improvise very well. Even Randy Rhoads admitted in an interview that he wasn’t good as improv. Different skill than just being a great player. It would be great if we could all do everything 10/10, but we’re all still human. For pure technique (and nothing else) I think Rick Graham is one of the best I know of. I can’t necessarily say the same about the other GIT graduates. Improv is a great skill to have no doubt, but if there’s a player that’s in every other way great I don’t think it matters that much ultimately if he’s not good at improv
 
Racerxrated said:
And, that tells me that IMO you really don't listen to what he does. His tapping was melodic, and absolutely fit everywhere he used it. There's nothing in any of his leads that sound to me like he's trying to fit in as many notes as possible. His phrasing seems to always work to my ear. I would think the Floyd usage would be the only thing that might take away from his leads, but again, both were NEW to the scene at the time. You could compare it to others who used it later, like Reb Beach and say Reb was more melodic or put more notes in the right place....but he did in 15 years after no one other than Ed used it.

This kind of thread basically always ends up in the same place.....we tend to support and prop players that are in our own age group lol...or guys that we grew up with. All you younger dudes who grew up in the 90s tend to not care for 70s/80s players with a few exceptions. Us older guys think the newer players that you guys dig are average haha.
It's easy to look at EVH and say "Ah that's not that great! Blah blah blah this that the other" But what you don't understand or fail to recognize, is this: at the time, there was nothing like that tone/style/ability to shred like EVH. In fact shred didn't exist until Ed.
Try to listen to any bootleg live stuff that's out there....some of his leads are absolutely on fire. He was incredible IMO.
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Tapping by its nature is rarely melodic since the notes are more spaced out and form arpeggios. That’s the whole point of the technique to reach notes you couldn’t get with just the left hand. His tapping patterns made sense harmonically (they weren’t melodies which tend to move more by steps than leaps most of the time), but musically was just too predictable. It sounded like aliens and awesome when I was 14, but then I learned tapping later and it wasn’t that interesting to me anymore. Like a gimmick magic trick. I found his phrasing obnoxious for my taste, but I think it can also be argued that it was so obnoxious, arrogant and over the top that it worked from that. Yngwie’s playing was kinda like that too imo. So obnoxious that it worked better from it

I understand there was nothing remotely like EVH before him and I give him all the props for that, but I think there are also a lot of not good things too and the bigger problem to me is that since he was the best at the time others also followed suit with his style of leads and so we kept getting worse and worse versions of that type of soloing and sadly most guitar listeners find that leadwork acceptable. Some will even say it’s “killer playing dude” (cringe). It shows how hugely influential he was, but not in a positive way for certain aspects. I listen mostly to classical music so I have my biases like we all do. I don’t actually like most music from my time
 
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braintheory said:
Exactly! Maiden had some really moving guitar solos. My personal favorite has always been the ones in Number of the Beast (my favorite song by them). I guess I’m just saying that I think guitarists should either just stick to their guns of what they do well or strive harder to do everything they do at higher level than they let themselves settle on most of the time. I really think some 5 years olds can write more musically compelling guitar solos than some of the ones out there and the rest of the song is great sometimes, just not the solo lol. Solos shouldn’t be afterthought fillers or like this is my chance to show off

If I just wanna be impressed with chops I’ll listen to Rick Graham, Shawn Lane or Guthrie Govan, but I’ll only listen to them for that purpose really
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Personally the chops stuff doesn't even impress me anymore, I'd much rather listen to a player like Michael Weikath (who isn't that impressive technically) but writes absolutely incredible melodies and has insane feel.

 
braintheory said:
There are so many amazing players out there that can’t improvise to save their life and I even know a few very bad players that improvise very well. Even Randy Rhoads admitted in an interview that he wasn’t good as improv. Different skill than just being a great player. It would be great if we could all do everything 10/10, but we’re all still human. For pure technique (and nothing else) I think Rick Graham is one of the best I know of. I can’t necessarily say the same about the other GIT graduates. Improv is a great skill to have no doubt, but if there’s a player that’s in every other way great I don’t think it matters that much ultimately if he’s not good at improv
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What are your thoughts on one of my faves, Paul Gilbert? Doesn't get much better from a chops standpoint, IMO.....
 
DanTravis62 said:
Personally the chops stuff doesn't even impress me anymore, I'd much rather listen to a player like Michael Weikath (who isn't that impressive technically) but writes absolutely incredible melodies and has insane feel.

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I’m impressed by anything that I feel is high quality for what it is. I just like to distinguish between whether that’s music, chops, improv, etc. Most players are lucky to have just one thing they can do very well, but some have more than one
 
Racerxrated said:
What are your thoughts on one of my faves, Paul Gilbert? Doesn't get much better from a chops standpoint, IMO.....
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It’s been admittedly a long time now since I last listened to him, so I’ll have revisit to give you a proper answer, but from my initial memories if we’re talking just chops I don’t see him being on the level of Graham, Lane, Govan, probably not Jason Becker either. Again none of those players I feel have good music to offer, but excellent playing (with both feel and chops, but again not the best musical content). I don’t really recall liking much musically of Gilbert besides scarified and “get out of my yard” I think it was called (maybe I got the title wrong). There were some good musical ideas and playing in their, but nothing that I felt was outstanding or super memorable for me personally. Maybe I’m just a douchey snob idk. Not many electric players really do much for me. The musicians that really wow me honestly tend to be others like some violinists, pianists, classical guitarists. In terms of both the feeling those top players can convey to me and of course their chops it’s just hard for me to be impressed with other things after that. This is just my background though. Actually for rhythm stuff Meshuggah is for sure one of my favorites
 
braintheory said:
It’s been admittedly a long time now since I last listened to him, so I’ll have revisit to give you a proper answer, but from my initial memories if we’re talking just chops I don’t see him being on the level of Graham, Lane, Govan, probably not Jason Becker either. Again none of those players I feel have good music to offer, but excellent playing (with both feel and chops, but again not the best musical content). I don’t really recall liking much musically of Gilbert besides scarified and “get out of my yard” I think it was called (maybe I got the title wrong). There were some good musical ideas and playing in their, but nothing that I felt was outstanding or super memorable for me personally. Maybe I’m just a douchey snob idk. Not many electric players really do much for me. The musicians that really wow me honestly tend to be others like some violinists, pianists, classical guitarists. In terms of both the feeling those top players can convey to me and of course their chops it’s just hard for me to be impressed with other things after that. This is just my background though
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Paul Gilbert said Shawn Lane was unreal. 'Nuff said.
 
Racerxrated said:
Paul Gilbert said Shawn Lane was unreal. 'Nuff said.
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Yes and I won’t argue with that lol. I don’t think Graham is unreal in that kinda way fwiw. I think he’s just very disciplined and developed a lot of precision over the years. The truly legendary players to me a have a level of talent that goes beyond that. I feel Lane has that and my favorite players of other instruments I feel certainly do as well. In a perfect world we shoulda just had Shawn Lane stick to playing and have a great composer write the music for him to play lol. This is how it’s typically done in the classical world and I prefer it that way unless you really are great at both, but that is very rare
 
With EVH solos, it’s more about how he played (the swing, the aggression, even in the leads), than what he played (the notes themselves). The intro to Meanstreets is just about the nastiest piece of electric guitar ever recorded IMO. It’s not meant to be analyzed to death, thereby reducing it’s perceived value because it’s not “complex enough”.
 
For me the most…
messenger said:
Overrated is Early EVH- his early tone literally hurt my ears. The high end drove me nuts. Not so bad now that I’m older and lost some of that hearing lol

Underrated is probably Richie Sambora- I always dug his tone no matter what he was usin
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Sacrilege!!!!
 
SoooRad said:
Overrated: Joe Bonamassa

I don’t have a problem with the guy, and not even really HIS tone, but he inspired a generation of guys playing with soft, bland tone with no bite.
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I have seen bonamassa ripping off Eric Johnson’s tone and it sounded pretty epic. I absolutely despise his original songs, and his bozo stage persona, but he can throw down some pretty mean leads.

As for inspiring others, I think he is the one dude ever that nobody would ever want to be like.

But, he has a killer gear collection including a few 59 and 60 bursts, a shitload of 50s and 60s fender guitars and amps, jubilees, and 17 dumbles, now worth a staggering 1.5 million each after dumbles sad, tragic and very mysterious passing, forever known as, “the day the tone died.”
 
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