Years ago I theorized all these 80s guitarist's ears were shot by now and they don't know good tone anymore, so they either crank the gain (a la EVH), or neuter it (a la Lynch) because maybe they have tinnitus. And yeah, I haven't liked Lynch's current tone for most of the last decade. He traded the phaser pedal for less gain.The problem with Lynch is that his playing style needs a lot of gain for the smear, but his ears don’t like the sound of high gain anymore. He’s amazing when he can get the feel down but the low gain stuff is just relentless on your chops if they aren’t up to par and he suffers at times because of it.
At least EVH could still play even on a bad day. I’d rather go to a live concert and hear badass high gain tone and a mediocre night playing wise than an 80’s metal guitar player using low gain and no chops to keep up with it. An 80’s metal guitar player that can nail all of the old stuff but with less gain than on the records is just badass. Yngwie comes to mind on this topic too but his playing good/bad days are from his car accident. Yngwie’s bad day is still way better than my best days.Years ago I theorized all these 80s guitarist's ears were shot by now and they don't know good tone anymore, so they either crank the gain (a la EVH), or neuter it (a la Lynch) because maybe they have tinnitus. And yeah, I haven't liked Lynch's current tone for most of the last decade. He traded the phaser pedal for less gain.
Love Lynch, big influence on me but equipment wise I take that guy with a grain of salt. Love my JVM, can get just about anything out of that amp so you're friend shouldn't have been crushed lol.Very cool thanks for sharing. It's funny that he has a JVM, I don't know what year it was but it's probably been 15 years ago it was shortly after the JVMs came out. He was touring around doing what was called a guitar clinic withGuitar World. He would basically play solos over backing tracks of his songs tell stories and then at the end he answered questions and sign autographs. When he got there they were trying to figure out what kind of head he was going to play through they brought a JVM up on stage put it through a marshall 412 cabinet he turned it on messed with it for about a minute and said get this shit out of here, get me something else I'm not playing through this. What's funny is my good friend had just bought a JVM and thought it was the greatest amp in the world, he is a huge George Lynch fan and it just absolutely crushed him.
He was more crushed that George said he didn't like it then anything, we had a mutual friend that worked at Guitar Center that could dial in the JVM to just incredible tones.Love Lynch, big influence on me but equipment wise I take that guy with a grain of salt. Love my JVM, can get just about anything out of that amp so you're friend shouldn't have been crushed
One significant difference between George and Ed, though not necessarily a pro or con, is that George seems like he was trying to pushing his playing "forward" (or at least towards something other than what he was really known for) while his gear is becoming more "stone age", where Ed's playing (while still awesome) had stagnated, but he was pushing the equipment ahead.
I think George's recent live sound is his best sound ever. Doesn't sound like a cardboard box like his tones sometimes did on the Dokken records
He sounds really good these days I think. Yes sometimes plays with too little gain and hits the phaser too much but he has his board dialed in now and sounds like he has it more or less figured out. I also like a klon clone as my main pedal and a bonsai for all the flavours of TS. Then a simple chorus pedal and a marshall in crunch. Here you can hear and see his latest live board in a demo he did for his wah. Sounds pretty huge to me. Got the delay going and saturating a bit more again.
Very well put dude.The problem with Lynch is that his playing style needs a lot of gain for the smear, but his ears don’t like the sound of high gain anymore. He’s amazing when he can get the feel down but the low gain stuff is just relentless on your chops if they aren’t up to par and he suffers at times because of it.
I think Lynch is playing better than ever, I’d kill to play on any of these bad ass projects that he seems to come out with every other month. The last two end machine albums are awesome.
unfortunately they have a new singer coming because apparently Robert Mason offended George at some point, Robert if you’re out there man I’ve got 50 original songs ready for you to do whatever the hell you want