Realistic Guitar Tones / Rigs ...

[susiwong]

Jason Brian Merrill wrote:

shut up and play yer guitar

great quote, but way out of context.
If you knew a bit about Frank, you'd be aware of his neverending intense quest for sound, equal to his musical ambitions.
He even invented lots of new techniques and devices to be able to achieve his sonic goals.
Cheers, susiwong

btw, here on kvr your quote might just as well read "throw away your synthesizer and play the piano".
How many would agree with that statement ?

[Van Greco]

If a real person played it, then doesnt that make it real? That's the way that I look at it. I find just as many uses for something like Boogex as I do for my twin these days when recording. They're all just different flavrs to me. I do wish there would be less emulation and more inovation with the guitar plugs though.


I've always prefered "My Guitar Wants To Kill Yer Mama" myself.

[Cyprus]

I'm a very good guitarist

That's nice, dear.

Anyway.

What is 'good tone'? People talk about 'it' as if we all know what 'it' sounds like, but in fact if we all coughed-up a sample of 'it', they'd all be significantly different. Frisell, Hendrix, Townsend, Bob Mould, Dave Pajo, VaiTrianiSteen, Jeff Beck, Black Flag...somebody somewhere considers each of these to epitomise 'it'.

Husker Du blew the doors off rock and roll in the 80s with guitars that sounded like...shit. Would their records sound better with Jeff Beck's 'good tone'? Obviously not.

Napalm Death changed the face of metal forever with guitars that sounded like...death. Nobody would have welcomed that sound from an amp-sim prior the ND.

I think these discussions would be more fruitful if people simply admitted that they want to sound like Hendrix/Zappa/Cobain or whatever and stopped implying that there is a universally shared concept of 'good tone' when there clearly isn't.

Yeah and I didn't say "good tone" was objective you f**king dipshit.

It is all subjective, it just so happens that these tones become "it" because a great many people feel the same way. If someone thinks the tone that they're getting from Guitar Rig or whatever it might be is 'it' than more power to them.[/code]

[Jason Brian Merrill]

Jason Brian Merrill wrote:

shut up and play yer guitar

great quote, but way out of context.
If you knew a bit about Frank, you'd be aware of his neverending intense quest for sound, equal to his musical ambitions.
He even invented lots of new techniques and devices to be able to achieve his sonic goals.
Cheers, susiwong

btw, here on kvr your quote might just as well read "throw away your synthesizer and play the piano".
How many would agree with that statement ?

thankfully, frank zappa wasnt so obsessed with his guitar that he didnt get any music done. That, my friend, is the point. I know more than a bit about frank. I have 4 gigs of mp3s on my hard drive of his -- thanks to my mom.

So really, not out of context at all.

and if you put MY words into context, you will see that i care alot about sound, and about getting a good tone. Im just not willing to spend my life searching for it, when its already in my fingers and hands.

so, maybe you should start quoting a bit better yourself, mon ami

[Jason Brian Merrill]

btw...
I've heard it many times by 'real' guitar players (and to a MUCH lesser extent, myself) that it matters not what they plug into to or use. They (and I) always end up sounding like themselves.(while my guitar gently kwacs)

thank you for your time, have a nice day...

yup, i know this to be the case for sure.

[susiwong]

OK, no need for further arguments, Jason.
You got your opinion, I got mine.
Funnily enough, your "4 gigs of Zappa mp3s from your mom" might prove something completely different than what you intended.
I'm out of here, got to work on my sound !
Cheers, susiwong

[Jason Brian Merrill]

OK, no need for further arguments, Jason.
You got your opinion, I got mine.
Funnily enough, your "4 gigs of Zappa mp3s from your mom" might prove something completely different than what you intended.
I'm out of here, got to work on my sound !
Cheers, susiwong

hey, if i end up liking zappa (which i dont as of yet) ill buy a couple of his cds that i do like.

dont get on my case about it

she sent it to me to open me up to new stuff as she always does.

glad for it too, i would have never gotten into the beatles if i didnt tape all of those LPs as a kid, o wait... perhaps the RIAA police should know about that one too, eh?

yup, go work on "the" sound

[CapnLockheed]

If a real person played it, then doesnt that make it real? That's the way that I look at it. I find just as many uses for something like Boogex as I do for my twin these days when recording. They're all just different flavrs to me. I do wish there would be less emulation and more inovation with the guitar plugs though.

Amen Brother.....after pages of nonsense finally a voice of
reason. You kids, I swear. Guitarists have more options today
than ever before. New "vintage" style boutique amps and stomp
boxes, hardware modelers, software ampsims and everything that
came before. And still you whine and complain. If, with all
the options available, you still can't find a "good" tone,
perhaps it's time to consider another instrument.

A computer
will never sound like exactly like a tube amp and so what?
I can make sounds with my guitar and plugins that have no
counterpart in the hardware world. I can also dial up sound
on a POD in seconds that sits perfectly in particular mix
saving my studio clients time and money. Does it sound exactly
like a triple recto with an sm57 off-axis....no. Does anyone
in the room care....no. As a technician I'm glad to have more
tools at my disposal. As an artist I'm happy to have more
colors on my pallette.

So yeah....shut up and play yer guitar!

Cheers......CL

[zenzulu]

Its a combination of the two: technique and tone. Although with technique and tone you still don't get very far if you don't have any creativity or feel, but yea. Anyway, about the Allman Brothers... I was wondering if anyone had come up with a tone similar to duane's. I need to mess around more with gr2.
Maybe a good fusion tone that doesn't eat away the melody with distortion. Something smooth.
My favorite preset as of now is the Sternly. The gambly leed is nice too.

Oh, BTW, nice to be a part of KVR

[Amberience]

There are so many guitarists that a good portion of them are just going to be posing wankers, and there are so many guitarists on KvR that a good portion of you guys are going to be posing wankers also.

[championrabbit]

Got that right!

There should be a cull of guitarists. Or at the very least guitarists should be forced by law to practice bass-playing at least as much as they practice guitar.

Perhaps we should be thankful that so many guitarists obsessively spend their lives searching for the 'perfect tone' since it at least distracts them from playing!

[zenzulu]

As much as I agree that there are many guitarists who waste their time worrying about things like tonality when its pointless because they hardly play the damn thing, this forum is regarding effects, and this website is devoted to instruments, effects, hosts, etc... right.

[Synesthesiac]

i'm having dificulty mixing when i use amp sims.

when i play through the sim it sounds pretty good and i think tht's bebcause i'm hearing the monitor speakers movement and even the room acoustics of the guitar getting plucked but neither of those 2 things gets recorded and so when i listen to playback the result is a plastic, 2 dimensional or flat sound and i know, kill me now...it sounds decent enough, that is, until i compare it to track recorded with an amp or a commercial release.

what's really strumming my strings now for DI is a tube preamp>souncard>cabinet impulses. I get the touch response which i believe plays an integral part to anyone's style or sound. i think dynamic convolution cabinet impulses would improve on this.

Tone can and does inspire and anything that persuades lil miss muse to come out and play with me is good and useful and fairplay.

[Jason Brian Merrill]

i'm having dificulty mixing when i use amp sims.

when i play through the sim it sounds pretty good and i think tht's bebcause i'm hearing the monitor speakers movement and even the room acoustics of the guitar getting plucked but neither of those 2 things gets recorded and so when i listen to playback the result is a plastic, 2 dimensional or flat sound and i know, kill me now...it sounds decent enough, that is, until i compare it to track recorded with an amp or a commercial release.

what's really strumming my strings now for DI is a tube preamp>souncard>cabinet impulses. I get the touch response which i believe plays an integral part to anyone's style or sound. i think dynamic convolution cabinet impulses would improve on this.

Tone can and does inspire and anything that persuades lil miss muse to come out and play with me is good and useful and fairplay.

I totally get what you are saying here, i have the same problem with amp sims -- It feels better as im playing it --

but i have one question.... how can an impulse give you a touch response when it is static? I would think dynamic convolution could be the only thing that could help this.

[Synesthesiac]

the touch response is from the preamp and yes the static cab impulse does dampen the dynamic, like notes don't bloom as much, but it is still discernable in sound and feel, try it.

dynamic convolution cabinets would be very welcomed, unfortunately i don't think the demand for it exists. it might be up to some sympathetic lone developer to gift us with that and then maybe those hardware convolution box guys will join in.