What is more important guitar an amp?

  • Thread starter Thread starter BrentSSL
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BrentSSL

BrentSSL

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When it comes to gear obviously it takes talented people to play. Usually you can have someone like Eddie Van Halen playing through a pignose with a mic in front and it still sounds awesome. My question though is what piece of gear do you think holds more sentimental value and has more "spirit" or vibe coming from it your rig or your guitar?
 
For me it's a combination of the two. I'm no EVH so if one or the other's missing it feels and sounds a bit off.
 
I tend to spend more on an amp than a guitar. I have had only 1 guitar that I've spent big money on, and it was a trade for a Charvel custom shop for my Cameron Aldrich I had. Great guitar but I've found that a 5-800 guitar can be almost as good. So I put more into amps. They seem to make the biggest difference to my ears.
 
If I had to pick, I'd rather play my good guitar thru a crappy amp than a crappy guitar thru a good amp.

With my guitar I pretty much sound the same on many amps.
With a guitar that's not one of mine.....like a mohany body/rosewood fretboard/passive pick ups....
it sounds and feels gross to me....no mater what amp I'm playing thru.
 
If it had to be one good and one shitty...id take a good amp and shitty guitar.
 
I tend to look for bonds wth guitars more than amps. I won't deny that finding an amp that is magical is special though.
 
LP Freak":2fxa9zrm said:
glip22":2fxa9zrm said:
How shitty are we talking?
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You know....shitty
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If it's that shitty, it's an easy choice. A shitty amp can sound great through a great guitar. Not the other way around. A shitty guitar that plays like shit, and buzzes all over like shit, and frets out on bends like shit, , is, you know....shitty and will sound like shit, no matter what, through a great amp. How can you choose the amp in this case? :confused:
 
Great guitar through a shit amp > shit guitar through a fantastic amp....all day.
 
To the first Question "Which is more important guitar or Amp ?" That's easy its the Amp.

To the second question "which has more spirit or Vibe ?" For me its the Guitar.
 
The cabs important too I feel perhaps the most important
 
BrentSSL":8k53j9za said:
The cabs important too I feel perhaps the most important
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I don't know about that. I find that kind of just adds a certain flavour. Obviously if it's absolute crap it might sound shitty.
 
A great amp can make a cheap guitar sound great. A crappy amp will sound bad no matter how good the guitar.
 
Knockout":3csq0z6z said:
Great guitar through a shit amp > shit guitar through a fantastic amp....all day.
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Really? For TONE? Sure, playing a great guitar is inspirational. But so is playing through a great amp. I play one of my Anderson strats through my Friedman Smallbox almost daily. But once in a while I'll pull my Yamaha Pacifica 611 out and play it through the Friedman (or my Splawn) and stil love the experience. When I play one of my Andersons through my Roland Cube 80XL, I still enjoy the experience... but I rarely do that. Great tube amp > Great guitar for me. Guitar quality is EVERYTHING in acoustic guitars. Pickups, amps, and speakers matter most in electric rigs.
 
squank":3mtjlzg8 said:
A great amp can make a cheap guitar sound great. A crappy amp will sound bad no matter how good the guitar.
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Exactly. I thought that this was a pretty universally accepted "fact" among those who've owned great electric guitars and great amps. At least I'll bet that if you polled people on boutique-oriented forums... the results would be HEAVILY skewed towards the amps. And again... I love my Anderson guitars and would hate to ever have to settle for anything less now that I've grown used to their perpetual inspiration (for me anyways). But still... to have to go back to a crappy-mediocre amp would be worse for me than having to go back to a less-than-steller guitar. As long as it didn't play like garbage, I would throw some decent pickups in there and get on with it.
 
I'm going to say guitar. I can run my main guitar into any decent valve amp, add a couple of pedals and get a great sound.
 
I've always thought that what counts [more] on a guitar is how it feels rather than how it sounded through an amp. Amps generally are the other way around...

So to answer your question, sound wise, the amp is much more important than what a guitar does to the overall tone.
 
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