Official Luthiers Forum!

At a dinner party the other night I heard a man make a $150 Cort sound like a million bucks (I strummed it while no one was around and, in my hack hands, it sounded like all $150). Last night I saw a preview for a new Bob Marley documentary and those opening notes of "Redemption Song" came over the theater's loudspeakers. There was so much character in the tone, but it still retained the sound of an inexpensive guitar. I have the feeling that if he had played it using an $8000 pristine guitar, the song would have lost its vibe.

So, do you think tone comes more from the players hands or more from the guitar itself? I'd like to hear what you all think about this.

Tone is purely a psychological phenomenon. It's a confluence of all your preconceptions, figuratively speaking.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

I wouldn't say PURELY.

Tone, is, by definition, the amount of different harmonics that are there at a certain level in dBs, for a certain amount of time.

There's a psychological phenomenon on our hearing, but the tone can be precisely (relatively..) quantified.

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Francis Richer, Montréal
Les Guitares F&M Guitars

I would say guitar tone is: Player's brain->hands->guitar->ears->brain feedback loop, plus the (hopefully ) many additional lines going to the listeners' ears/brains Arguable spiritual components involved as well.

Sometimes you get lucky and find a cheap guitar that sounds pretty good. But a cheap guitar that sounds cheap... let me put it this way; I've heard good players sound good on bad guitars. I've heard bad players sound bad on good guitars. But I've never heard a good player on a good guitar and thought, "man, I wish he woulda done that on his Esteban instead"

Here's a good example. Excellent playing, but the crappy guitar spoils it a bit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsRnNzJOxU8

You can do a tremendous amount of shaping of the sound of a guitar, especially an acoustic, with right hand technique. Good, strong left hand technique can also make a guitar that is otherwise difficult to play sound good. A weak player won't be able to play cleanly on such a guitar.

re: the video
Her use of thumb and finger picks is only hurting her. Even with the picks on, you can brush the strings instead of picking them so directly, warming things up a bit (this is actually a big part of Eric Johnson's sound...at least it is when I'm trying to cover him). She could pick closer to the neck and warm it up a bit. An advanced player would do just a TOUCH of a palm mute, which would kill some of the higher frequencies. She's not doing any of that. I'm not saying she's a bad player, but a more advanced player would adapt their technique to the equipment and make it sound better.

A good guitar may not necessarily have 10x the tone of a cheap guitar, but it will have good workmanship, ease of repair, which means the guitar will keep the player happy for years to come, whereas a cheap guitar is designed to be disposable. When it breaks due to shoddy workmanship like wrong bridge plate material, the repair cost is often higher than the value of the guitar, so the owner won't repair it.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
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Its way easier to play good on a good guitar ! So, if you would have compared that guy playing a "good" guitar and the one he played, he would have played even better and the sound would have been better to...

I did a recording not to long ago. (with some of the best players there are ) and the guitarplayer was using a fully working but crap guitar (sounded good to him) after the recording was done we had to take that guitar out and redo the recording with a Bourgois guitar instead. (live recording). "Before we recorded we did not know where the bad sound came from" But then again, like you said about Bob Marley, its all about what your recording, if all instrument are so so... then that is a sound of its own.

a good guitarist can make any guitar sound great, but compared to the same player playing a good guitar its a big difference.

Lars

that u tube video someone linked to a while ago with the guy playing a concrete block guitar, to demonstrate the wonderful tone of his piezo pickups, I thought sounded terrible, but the player was truly amazing. Part of the ego of virtuosos I think is how they can make anything sound good, which makes that good vs. cheap guitar argument a bit blurry. Some artists swear that a cheap tinny sounding instrument is better for recording with because it doesn't get boomy. That's about all I know at this point.

The rest is all mimicry.

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"Preoccupation with an effect gives it power and enhances the error"
from "Your Owner's Manual" by Burt Hotchkiss.

No one buys a ticket to hear a particular guitar. They pay to hear the human behind it. The guitar is only a tool that serves as a way to make sound/music. All the voodoo about what makes a guitar sound great is only real if the one playing it believes it. The guitars look and feel is of most import to the one playing it. If the player sees it as easy to play or great sounding it can only help his/her performance. Every factory guitar maker has great players using their product. Some folks won't consider another maker other than brand x because they are of course the greatest maker to ever have existed. Perception is everything and that perception is affected by many things beyond what we can put into words.

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No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.
Christopher Morley

Better players play with attack, dynamics, vibrato, palm mutes, string bends, off beat hammers and pulls. They rarely will let a note sit without moving it with vibrato or a pull. So there are constant changes to the pitch and volume.

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Tone comes from magic fairy dust. You need to catch a fairy first, then you shake the dust off of them into the sound hole. Word on the street is, Martin is low on fairy dust and Bob Taylor just found a fairy nest in the woods near Vancouver, BC.
There has been no confirmation yet on either of these rumors, but C.F. Martin iv has been seen wandering in the forests of Vancouver mumbling to himself and looking disheveled as though he had been in the forest for days looking for something.
If you can not find and capture any fairies, both your playing and the sound of your instruments can be vastly improved by adding copious amounts of alcohol to your stomach before playing. The affect will work if you begin drinking the alcohol as you play, but full effect will not be reached until several hours into the binge...I mean, experiment.
Try at your own risk.

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PMoMC

Describing tone with words is worthless, but I know tone when I hear it.

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Tone comes from the Tone Fairies. Any other statement is pure myth. It's not the wood, the shape of the instrument, or in the hands of the player.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

A great player can make any guitar sound great (assuming it is playable). A bad player can make any guitar sound bad. Ultimately, we can discuss definitions, pre-conceptions, and intellectualize the definition of tone, but the bottom line is "it's the player". That said, a great guitar in a great players hands is magic.

Glenn

I tend to scan, so excuse me if someone already stated this.

Back to the original post, one big differnece in the other person playing and you playing is that you are sitting behind the guitar when you play. I think this idea is why a lot of people put sound ports on the guitars--so the player gets a direct "beam" of the sweet sound.

Of course, I agree with the discussions on technique. There are lots of subtle things about the way you touch the strings, and I still find new things that affect the tone production.

From what I've read.... it's in the glue.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

So true Brian. And it seems the more ancient the recipe for the glue the better the sound..... oops... I mean tone, of course

I wonder what the cavemen used to hold things together?

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

Duct tape, of course.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Only the smart ones Don.......

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

Thanks for the replies, guys - that was fun!

I just came across this tonight in the current Taylor Guitars' Wood & Steel (p. 10). The second question being asked, Bob calls it "Bone Tone": http://www.taylorguitars.com/sites/defa ... lor_EN.pdf

Tone comes from your heart and your soul.

Steve

I read somewhere that tone is produced in the initial attack. After that all instruments sound the same. I might have read that in a christmas cracker (do you have those in the US?), but that is obviously why finger style sounds different to plectrum. So, in some way (as other people have said above) alot of the tone depends on the player's technique.

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We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at guitars.

The sensible answer is of course that probably 85-90% of tone comes from the top, the balance from the back and sides. But the shape of the instrument and how the luthier builds it and draws the sound out of it are another factor. But as we've discussed a little, how good the player is can make an inexpensive guitar actually sound better than it is. So there really are a lot of factors involved. The job of a luthier is to coax the best tone out of the instrument they make so that the player can sound even better.
I remember when I got my first decent guitar...my playing seemed to improve quickly, and it wasn't due to actual improvement so much as it was to a better instrument making me better. But there comes a point in one's skill where the playing then makes an instrument sound even better. Not sure if that makes sense, but it does seem to hold true.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

That really is an excellent point. We have become a disposable society and one that demands instant gratification at teh expense of quality.

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As for tone, the first thing I do when I pick up any guitar is find the guitars unique vocal qualities, I look for where the instrument sounds the best. I've got this piece of junk Yamaha classical guitar that I bought probably 20 years ago now to take with me on camping trips, a total beater. It has a wonderful sound on the open A Minor chord but that's about it.

A fine guitar will have much more of these finer vocal points then a simple guitar hence it enhances your over all tone as you have much more to pull from.

Lots of snarky replies here, but this is actually an interesting question.
Music is communication of emotions, ideas, fragments of memory. Many factors have to be in alignment in order for unhindered transmission of musical soul from performer to listener. Tone is one part, but tone is completely subjective. Sure, you can plot the frequency response, but our ears are linked to the rest of our brains where all sorts of unmeasurable data is stored. Music excites these parts of our brains in unexpected ways.
The instrument's potential plays a large part, but as others have mentioned, the player's touch is also a huge factor. Even the listener's ear is a factor. A naive listener could probably not hear the difference between a decent guitar and a great guitar. "Tone" in this example does not come into play, other than recognizing that the instrument being played is a guitar.
I would even go so far as to say the ego of the performer has a big impact on tone. When I hear a "hey look at me, see what I can do!" type of musician, I find that tone production takes a back seat to technical wizardry. When I hear a " just listen" type of musician, his or her ego has taken a back seat to conveying musical ideas. This type of performer has figured out how to coax the instrument into expressing the musical intent in a piece of music, which when looked at on paper, is just a collection of 12 semi-tones and their variants. What we all wait for is an expressive musician that is linked with an instrument that is deep, rich, clear, powerful, relaxed and capable of lots of tone colors. These are rare moments for sure. But when they happen, and you are there, you are not likely to forget it ever.

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Stay with the happy people.
--Reynolds Large