Unpopular opinion, Tone is.....

MadAsAHatter said:
This is pretty much what I was getting at. Tone and style are 2 separate entities. Tone being the processed signal converted to sound. Style being all the nuances in technique that define you as a player.

braintheory gave a great example of the difference with Dimebag. To me his tone sounds like a screaming cat scratching on a chalkboard, but his playing style was phenomenal. If you gave him a vintage Gibson & Marshall to play through the tone would change entirely but you'd still know it's Dimebag from his playing style.

An example in the same vein is Metallica. Their tone is completely different from RTL and Black album. I don't remember them all having hand transplants but I do recall they switched from Marshall to Mesa amps. Regardless of the gear they were using James' down picking style is fully apparent on both albums.

Dan pretty much covered a good example from the opposite side. Given the same gear, settings and environment, an open power chord is going to have the same tone whether played by me or Yngwei. Moving past that Yngwei's arpeggio sweep picking style is going to come out and my tripping over my fingers, hitting sour notes, trying to play a solo is going to come out. One will be good playing and the other a pile of dung, but the tone will remain the same.

No matter what gear you drop in from of someone the tone may change but their style will always come out, A great player will have great Style & a shit player will be shit. Then no matter how great of Style a player has their fingers can't make a Marshall JCM have the same tone of a Fender Twin.

Tone and Style go hand-in-hand and complement or work against each other, but are 2 separate entities. Putting them both together and dependent on the player and gear one may be able to mask the deficiencies of the other to have an overall decent sound. Or both can be horrid and everyone's ears start to bleed. When both work together in harmony is when something glorious can be produced. But Tone can't fundamentally change a person's Style and conversely a person's Style won't fundamentally change gear's Tone. This is why I concluded that Tone is in the gear and Style is in the fingers.
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I agree. I think way too many people don't separate the style and playing from the actual "tone."

They're two completely different things that come together and glorious results can be produced.

Whenever someone is a hardline "magic tone fingers" type, I just assume they can't separate the two in their head.
 
Ahh, I always laugh at these discussions. It's an electric guitar, in case you forgot that salient point. Unplugged, it's pretty quiet. But I guarantee you if you heard my rig (one of the many) and you picked up the guitar right after I setup the controls and handed you the guitar, YOU WOULD SOUND THE SAME!

Tone is in the fingers...yeah...right. You bring your 5w combo amp over to my 67 stack and compare. Within 20 seconds you will realize the folly of tone being "in the fingers".

Sheesh.
 
Scumback Speakers said:
Ahh, I always laugh at these discussions. It's an electric guitar, in case you forgot that salient point. Unplugged, it's pretty quiet. But I guarantee you if you heard my rig (one of the many) and you picked up the guitar right after I setup the controls and handed you the guitar, YOU WOULD SOUND THE SAME!

Tone is in the fingers...yeah...right. You bring your 5w combo amp over to my 67 stack and compare. Within 20 seconds you will realize the folly of tone being "in the fingers".

Sheesh.
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A lot of listeners seem to get distracted by the playing (whether good or bad) and then decide how good the tone is based on that (I know, it's remarkably stupid). From now on when guy's post good sounding clips of new gear they get, I'll say congrats on the new fingers, they sound killer!
 
DanTravis62 said:
I agree. I think way too many people don't separate the style and playing from the actual "tone."

They're two completely different things that come together and glorious results can be produced.

Whenever someone is a hardline "magic tone fingers" type, I just assume they can't separate the two in their head.
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That lack of separation is a big problem imo. I think that's sadly how most people are and not just with music, but when judging really almost anything (people, food, movies, books, etc.)

Another thing most don't seem to realize because they don't separate is that in the majority of "great" or successful songs tend to really only have one or 2 hooks/riffs/or musical ideas that are really great and the other 90-something percent of the song is just musically adequate enough to functionally work, yet most guys will still think they're great songs. That always bothered me, but also why I stuck to just playing classical guitar rather than writing music myself
 
braintheory said:
Another thing most don't seem to realize because they don't separate is that in the majority of "great" or successful songs tend to really only have one or 2 hooks/riffs/or musical ideas that are really great and the other 90-something percent of the song is just musically adequate enough to functionally work, yet most guys will still think they're great songs. That always bothered me, but also why I stuck to just playing classical guitar rather than writing music myself
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That's really true in most popular music, but not as applicable in most of the stuff I'm into
 
You don't need to turn your mid knob past noon to cut in a mix. Especially not on a 5150.
 
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DanTravis62 said:
That's really true in most popular music, but not as applicable in most of the stuff I'm into
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Idk, I find it to be the case in most genre’s, even in many pieces in classical. There are so many pieces with maybe one gorgeous melody or a beautiful contrapuntal section or other little gems within the piece that clearly came from a place of inspiration and then the rest of the piece is just stuff that simply "works", but that's it, more formulaic in nature. I think it's just very very difficult to have a piece of music from beginning to end where every idea has pure inspiration/feeling behind it. I know it's very particular, but I can't help thinking about it that way. That’s why I opted to be a player, not a composer. Was too frustrating to write stuff where I knew only 1 or 2 ideas really were good and the rest just functionally worked. For me that didn’t “work”
 
I will agree with what Ed said.. it starts in the fingers "and it ends at the speaker, things in between are ways to express what exactly or style you want to express/hear to yourself or anyone else. Why dont jazz guys play 2204s with SD-1s in front? Is that the fingers causing that acquired desired result. The dead horse lives after decades of beatings is all I can say. Guys use different gear for different styles sound and yes tone. A tone stack... bass/middle/treble is in the fingers? Why do we need fucking knobs then.. genius damn
 
anomaly said:
Not even Eddie Van Halen could make a HM-2 into a Gorilla practice amp sound good, so gear is a huge part of it. I think tone is about 60% the speakers, 25% the amp and 15% the fingers. Regardless of the gear you gotta know how to play in tune, have good muting skills etc... so of course part of it is the hands. But yes, that's more technique than anything. If you have great technique and ears you can make some pretty shitty gear sound good. Tone is mostly about EQ and distortion characteristics, overtones/harmonics. Every part of the signal chain matters too.
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pretty sure he could
 
Scumback Speakers said:
Ahh, I always laugh at these discussions. It's an electric guitar, in case you forgot that salient point. Unplugged, it's pretty quiet. But I guarantee you if you heard my rig (one of the many) and you picked up the guitar right after I setup the controls and handed you the guitar, YOU WOULD SOUND THE SAME!

Tone is in the fingers...yeah...right. You bring your 5w combo amp over to my 67 stack and compare. Within 20 seconds you will realize the folly of tone being "in the fingers".

Sheesh.
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there are a lot of people who don't get it Jim 😂 they want to mythologize their heros

"The reason I can't sound like them is 'tone is in the fingers'"

It's amazing how without a doubt, every single person who says this trope has to follow up with "but not MY fingers" - well then, how would they KNOW then?

I would love to hear just ONE of these "magic tone fingers" people try and get a Metallica sound straight into a fender twin
 
braintheory said:
There’s always gonna be that one guy here and there that still will say “tone is in the fingers” as a way to justify not going all the way with optimizing gear
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On the same gear, a great player will always sound better than a lesser player because of his technique.
On even better gear, they will both sound better because said gear will have better tone. There’s really nothing more to it...
 
Beyond Black said:
On the same gear, a great player will always sound better than a lesser player because of his technique.
On even better gear, they will both sound better because said gear will have better tone. There’s really nothing more to it...
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Of course but

Theres always the same flat-earthers around.

"Eddie would sound amazing on a gorilla and an hm2!"

Yeah his TECHNIQUE would still be present, but his tone would be shit unless it was super crusty grindcore or death metal.

Not understanding that his tone would be the same as everyone else's on a gorilla and hm2 is the crux of the issue - these people can't separate the two concepts in their mind.
 
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