Your Favorite Guitar Tone

Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Sure, I could make "Your Favorite Signature Sound," but that would be too general for my liking.

I think Jerry Cantrell needs little introduction, but even still I can't praise his sound enough. Man in the Box, What The Hell Have I, No Excuses, Heaven Beside You, and even newer songs like A Looking View should say enough about him. He creates atmosphere like nobody's business.

edited 19th Apr '14 11:45:28 PM by Alucard

Santana's tone is a favorite of mine, especially on the early records ("Black Magic Woman", for example- it's the mixture of bite and sustain, and the impression that the guitar's "talking"...). I'm also a fan of David Gilmour. Both his signature atmospheric yet biting solo tone and the variety of interesting textures he uses on rhythm parts and fills. Well-used effects are... well, well-used.

On a different note, the classic Hendrix and Cream tones are... well, classic. Love me some 60s/early 70s fuzztones, and it works very well with the riffing style. Also, Tommy Iommi. YES.

And, for something completely different, the tones Sonic Youth get out of their guitars. Both guitarists. So abrasive, yet hypnotic, and once again, it works VERY well with the playing style.

Actually, you've just hit on another game I could play all day. Or night, in this case. What can I say, I spend too much time listening to music...

There are several guitar styles I like.

Keith Urban usually has very good tone. His solos still have discernible notes and melodies, instead of just being lightning-fast runs like Brad Paisley, and there's a lot of passion in the way he plays.

I also like the "chicken pickin'" style that Jerry Reed used. Session guitarist Brent Mason plays a slower "chicken pickin'" style a lot, too.

Pete Anderson also had a pretty "fat" style that still somehow sounded country. You can hear him on almost everything Dwight Yoakam put out before 2005.

And if you want some great early fuzz work, check out "Don't Worry" by Marty Robbins. That was entirely unintentional due to a faulty preamp.

edited 20th Apr '14 5:17:04 AM by Twentington

A lot of the really early fuzztone/distortion sounds were accidental. Busted or out of alignment tubes, beaten-up speaker cones, holes in said cones... Stuff like that.

Also, another great early distorted tone: Link Wray's "Rumble".

My favorite would have to be the tone that George Harrison used on his guitar-playing a lot. Best examples I can think of are in "You Never Give Me Your Money" (about 2:48 in) and on Cream's "Badge" (about a minute in).

Although it's not quite the same, I believe Electric Light Orchestra used a similar tone on the guitars on their song "10538 Overture" (the very beginning onward) and The Pillows also use a similar tone in the chorus(?) of their song "STALKER" (again, about a minute in).

I'm not sure what this is called, but I love the reverb effect that Bo Diddley achieved.

Also heard on Robert Plant & Alison Krauss's version of "Rich Woman" (I think T-Bone Burnett is the one actually playing the guitar).

On Bo Diddley, that sounds like a tremolo effect to me.

Bo used quite a bit of tremelo in his songs...

Sonic Youth have used many guitar tones, nearly all of them fantastic, although that is just as much a matter of what they are playing and the techniques used therein matching the timbres used as the timbres themselves. Ditto Wire, particularly circa Chairs Missing and 154.

For pure corrosive evil, Richard Kirk's early work with Cabaret Voltaire has a delightfully nasty tone, or noise rock acts like The Goslings whose distortion could take paint off of walls and burn holes in the floor. Pure galling noise-tones are always delicious. Take the ocean feedback washes on The Birthday Party's "The Friend Catcher".

For most out-there tones, St. Vincent is always a good call, not unlike early Wire. Her guitar may sound like anything and everything. Very weird and expressive.

And then there's that broken glass clarity of the flange effect and carbon composite fretboard on Keith Levene's Public Image Ltd. work that is simply to die for. And whither Bernard Sumner's inimitable scrap-metal-glint snarl on Joy Division tracks like "Ice Age" or the off-key lullaby chiming of "Ceremony" and "Disorder"?

Very eloquent points made here, actually. How'd I miss Wire, The Cabs (though I'm more familiar with their later EBM records like The Crackdown and Micro-Phonies, I do like the early stuff), The Birthday Party, Keith Levene and Bernard Sumner?!

Also, I'm a big fan of Robert Smith. He's more well-known as a singer, but I always thought The Cure had a cool-sounding guitar tone- sorta a Goth/Surf/Psychedelic Rock thing happening. He also recorded with Siouxsie And The Banshees. Who had a long string of great guitarists. And Daniel Ash's signature noisy-but-atmospheric stuff in Bauhaus is pretty sweet, too...

Also, of course, there's Bob Mould's tone on the various Husker Du albums, Peter Buck's work in REM, Paul Westerberg's ragged rhythm work in The Replacements and, of course, Curt Kirkwood's kaleidoscopic variety of tones (alternately jangly, trippily weird and abrasively aggressive)on the Meat Puppets key albums.

I love many different styles of guitar playing and tones...

edited 21st Apr '14 12:30:50 AM by sharkcrap11

I'm not sure if I'd consider my favorite, but I really love the bright sounding acoustic guitar in Boston's songs, like in the main pattern of More Than A Feeling.

edited 21st Apr '14 12:50:23 AM by Nintendork64

I love Stevie Ray Vaughan's guitar tone. Very thick and resonant.

David Gilmour's tone is heavenly.

On the complete opposite side of the spectrum, I love the super thick "buzzsaw" guitar tone of classic Swedish Death Metal like Entombed, Dismember, etc.

Ronni Le Tekro of TNT, puts most of his guitars through reverb and Marshall amps with delay and it sounds wonderful.