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Old 03-03-2009, 03:39 AM   #423
Moose
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Carlsbad, CA
Posts: 48
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BoxOfSnoo View Post
Well I'm not gonna fight you, yep. You clearly have more experience than I do. But I can hear it, so I think most anyone can.

I don't think it's an "I can hear it" type of argument. Seriously.

I know a thing or two about amplifiers from doing repairs and building and the like, but what I've learned from that work isn't as much about amps as it is about the guitarists themselves.

Guitarists are, often, eccentric people. Some can hear the difference between components, some hear with their eyes (It looks cool, so it sounds cool). Some have an undeniable preference in tones, but can't word it to save their lives. And all have "trained" their ears to some extent or other by the music they've listened to and the equipment they've played.

Additionally, many guitarists are social people. Social people learn from their peers and base their ideals and their concepts of normalcy on those of their peers as well as those they perceive as already existing. Normal tribal behavior.

So, if a guitarist wants a fuzz tone, decides that the correct fuzz tone to emulate is Player X, and Player X uses a Germanio Fuzzpedia pedal, the Silico Fuzzopolois just won't be "right" to emulate that tone.

Put less delicately, guitarists are often nuts. They chase gear and tone in crazy ways, almost to the point of superstition.

Here's some anecdotal evidence of that insanity -- I have a red coricidan bottle for slide playing and the last couple of strings are wrapped over the TOP of the stop tailpiece on my main axe. And I have AWESOME ears, that can clearly hear no positive difference wrapping the strings that way, but I do it anyway because it gives me a touch of Billy Gibbons mojo even if I don't sound anything like him.

To a guitarist, be it because he's looking for mojo, emulating a hero, or heard a recoded tone that he just fell in love with, crap like the brand of opamp in the overdrive or clipping diode in his dirt box could be the difference between tonal night and day.

Now, stop thinking like a guitarist. Start thinking like a recordist. Someone whose job is to engineer or produce NEW music.

In this case, you don't really give a flying patootie whether you exactly emulate Guitarist X and his fuzz-box tone. In this case, what you care about is that your guitarist has a good tone that is his own. Who cares if he copped it from someone else, or tried every pedal at the Banjo Center to get it, what matters is that his gear feels good to him in the studio. His sound has to inspire him to play his absolute best.

Remember, you're not trying to recreate some classic. You're trying to create something new and fantastic. A performance with a, technically, perfect recreation of the tone you have in your head might not have any groove or impact. A performance with a good tone that isn't the perfect match to your ideal might have a fantastic groove, or something that just sets it apart, stylistically, that makes it significantly better than the tonally "perfect" alternative.

If the performer's muse is suddenly alive because he has a piece of gear that inspires him, you get the best damned tone from that you can down on tape. Doesn't matter if it's a 35 year old effect box, or something brand new and completely unique.

That's exactly what they were doing in studios before the 1960s, cutting to mono; or in motown where the room was small and made for a very full sound; or in Abbey Road where the mic pres had such a distinctive sound that you can hear the studio's signature on bands as diverse as the Beatles and Pink Floyd. The engineers, producers, and performers were just using what was available to them to the best of their abilities, and chasing inspiration whether it came from a new synth (who cares what type of caps were in it if it was cool) or a fantastic groove by the Funk Brothers after a few weeks of nightly jazz club gigs after work.
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