Unpopular opinion, Tone is.....

DanTravis62 said:
Tone is literally everything that doesn't involve separate individual players and their tendencies.

It's the sound of the gear.

Retards who suck can play power chords just the same as yngwie.

And if you can't tell from a power chord, you aren't talking about "tone" anymore.
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braintheory said:
No in those scenarios their tone still sounded like garbage to me, but the playing itself was impressive and they get props for that (not the tone). It always amazed me that most can’t seem to distinguish between quality of playing and quality of tone (independent things). Too many guys just seem to hear things as a singular package and miss out I think on some important details to listen for
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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.
 
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.
 
Tone as endresult is a mix of both. None of the pros didn’t go through guitars, amps, PUs and pedals till they settled. They went through the tone search as many of us but also were working constantly on their guitar skills (unlike some of us).
EVH, the one most often reffered as the tone in the fingers guy, used variacs and extreme bias settings to achieve his goals. So his mindset definitely expanded the practicing guitar only approach.
 
I think it depends on how you define "tone". If you're talking timbre, then most of that is the gear. If you mean personality/style, it's the person.

No matter how good someone is, they're not going to get an angry Pitbull sound from a solid state Carvin SX-200. They're not to going to get a Fender clean running an 808 into a dimed NMV Marshall. How they handle the instrument will have a subtle effect, but the tone is coming from the gear. But their style/personality will come out regardless of the gear. Good players still sound good regardless of what they're playing. They still sound like themselves.

Unless you can agree on what people mean by "tone", everyone's answer may be different, but that doesn't mean any of them are wrong.
 
GOHOINC said:
So there is supposed to be more than 1 knob?

Tone is hereditary. Just ask Wolfie.

I've heard grandma, mom and now wife say it to all the men in my family. "Don't you take that tone with me..."
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Man, if I had a dollar for everytime I was told that growing up :LOL:
 
Tone =

Pick,
Strings,
String gauge,
Pickups,
Pickup placement,
Bridge,
Nut,
Guitar wood,
Neck wood,
Fret Material,
Guitar wiring,
Guitar cord,
Amplifier,
Gain Stages,
Amp Wattage,
Transformers,
Preamp Tubes,
Power Tubes,
Speaker cable,
Speakers,
Speaker Cabinet,
Cabinet wood,
Front / Rear loaded,
Microphone,
Mic placement…

Technique =

Brain / Hands / Chops

Obviously, Jon Schaffer sounds way better through a Larry Dino than I do, but that’s ‘technique’.

How many times has someone on Rig Talk said they’ve ‘been chasing a tone in their head for years and finally found it’.
…They finally found what, their hands?

If Tone is all in the hands, Rigtalk would not exist.

Lastly, as thegame said, there is a small window of overlap and, ultimately, tone is subjective.



… just my opinion.
I know, maybe I’m in the minority😉
 
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I wonder if there’s any correlation between those who don’t believe tone comes from the fingers and guys who are constantly flipping gear looking for the “right” amp/guitar/pedals and vice versa?

For those who believe it’s all about the gear and has nothing or very little to do with the fingers; how many amps/guitars have you flipped?

And vice versa; for those who believe it comes from the fingers and the gear isn’t the biggest deciding factor, how many for you guys?
 
BesaMoogie said:
Tone as endresult is a mix of both. None of the pros didn’t go through guitars, amps, PUs and pedals till they settled. They went through the tone search as many of us but also were working constantly on their guitar skills (unlike some of us).
EVH, the one most often reffered as the tone in the fingers guy, used variacs and extreme bias settings to achieve his goals. So his mindset definitely expanded the practicing guitar only approach.
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This; how you attack the strings, how you finger and release notes, counts. Then again, so do the guitar, pickups, strings, pedals, amps, cabs, and on and on. So, tone is in everything between your brain where it starts the output chain and your ears, also including your ears and hearing deficiencies.

:D
 
In your balls.

Even tho I hate to admit it, Gene Simmons put it the best: You don't play with your head, you play with your dick
 
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