Ultimate Tone ?!?

[mort]

Oh yeah, another good one that I can't believe I didn't think about right away.... Warren Haynes in the Central Park video of Cortez the Killer w/ Dave Matthews. Guy cops a big huge fantastic LP/Marshall type tone. Love it.

And how 'bout Ry Cooder in those videos with the Moula Banda Rhythm Section(I think I got their name right). Sooooooooooo good. I think my fav of that run is How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live.

[Gibsonman63]

OK, two more...

Gary Moore - Really meaty, but clear and punchy LP/Marshall tone.

Mark Kendall of Great White - They're more famous for pyrotechnics gone wrong, but check out "House of Broken Love".

[Chuck H]

check out "House of Broken Love".

Excellent!!! Is it a high gain pop rock tone or a smokey blues tone? It's niether and both at the same time! nice. The modulation sounds distinctly Dbox but you can also hear evidence that the amp is cranked like dual note bends beating low and the ambiant background noise level typical of cranked and miked amps. You can tell by the feedback control that he's standing right in the room with the amp too and not woosing out in the control room with the amp behind the glass.

Oh, and +++ on your earlier mention of No Quarter live. Page's tone and uique style at it's finest indeed.

I hope others are looking up some of these references. Good stuff.

[Ken Moon]

Tab Benoit - Nice and Warm - Sweetest Fender sound you ever heard.

First mention of Tab I've ever seen in one of these threads!

He uses a '72 Thinline tele into different brownface and blackface fenders, but he always puts in darker-sounding speakers, and keeps the Treble knob almost all the way down on the amp. Way to dark and muddy a tone for most, but he makes it sound sweet and warm. Last time I saw him, he was using a Pro Reverb, and I could see from the corner of the stage that at least one of the speakers was an Eminence Swamp Thang.

[cminor9]

Guess I'll keep this thread going one more day.

+1 on Tab Benoit. You can definitely hear the tele there. Wondered what kind of amp he was using.

Another tone I just love is found on Toad The Wet Sprocket albums from the 90's. Some really nice voxy grind there, which is tone I just love. Another great album for this is Big Head Todd and the Monsters Live Monsters album. Some good strat and vox/matchless sounds going on there.

A lot of the tones that get people all worked up don't really do it for me. Jimmy Page for example, or Clapton.

[txstrat]

Somehow I find it interesting how different people get their tone out of different gear and many tones they get out of it are really great.
I'm starting here with announcing different amps for their specific tones:
(I'm aware that the guitar is also responsible for the tone, but anyway)
Brown Vibrolux: Kevin Brown - Write A Bible Of Your Own (great clean chimey Fender sound)
Brown Vibrolux: Jeff Golub on very many tracks (great clean Fender sound with a Strat)
Brown Deluxe: Billy Gibbons on Blue Jean Blues (using a Strat)
Vox AC30: Rory Gallagher on many tracks
Blonde Bassman: Brian Setzer on almost all Stray Cats tracks (sometimes very chimey sometimes with grind)
BF Vibroverb: Many SRV tracks

[cminor9]

Brown Deluxe: Billy Gibbons on Blue Jean Blues (using a Strat)

Still playing yours? Man, I am so glad I sold mine. Grew to hate that thing Couldn't get a sound out of it I liked.

[txstrat]

Still playing yours? Man, I am so glad I sold mine. Grew to hate that thing Couldn't get a sound out of it I liked.

Yeah, I still dig it. Might be the fact that I copied it 1:1. Your had just one channel if I recall correct, didn't it?
It's even chimey to a degree but has that mid bark when you turn it up more than 10 o'clock.
What are you playing through right now?

[Hella1hella]

well, not sure how many people have heard of these guys...

my favorite guitar tones are from a band from new jersey. TROPHY SCARS. I just cant help but to listen to the albums for hours, the guitar is just too good to be true.

[mooreamps]

Carlos Santana.
Album : Abraxas
Song : "Black Magic Woman"

-g

[Chuck H]

Hard to argue with that. I think he had a Princeton/Boogie at that time. That is, an early prototype Boogie amp that was a Fender Princeton modified by Randall Smith.

[mooreamps]

Ya, well.. .. That may answer a few questions why he is in limited partnership with Mesa..

-g

[thumbs]

Lots of good posts here. I'm gonna throw Mike Bloomfield into the mix; just about anything from his Super Session/ Electric Flag/ Live at Bill Graham's Fillmore West period. He really set the bar for a lot of us older dudes and is one of the guys I keep going back to. What a great sound with such simple tools! Not many could pull it off.

[cminor9]

Yeah, I still dig it. Might be the fact that I copied it 1:1. Your had just one channel if I recall correct, didn't it?
It's even chimey to a degree but has that mid bark when you turn it up more than 10 o'clock.
What are you playing through right now?

Yeah, it had one channel, and I re-used the first triode that would normally go to the second channel as a parallel first stage. I guess that could have messed up the vibe. The amp sounded fine off the bench, but I just couldn't get a usable sound from it. I also never really liked the speaker I put with it, a weber 12A150A. A guy I play with heard me say I was going to tear it down and rebuild as a 5G9 and begged me not to. So I sold it to him and he just loves it, gigs with it all the time. Go figure.

I still use my 5E3 and a Matchless Spitfire clone I built. 5F4 and 5G9 are always on my short list of things to build, but I am afraid the 5G9 will be a bit too close to the 6G3. But really, I don't need anything. Just getting the itch to build. It's been over a year. Waaaay too long.

What I really need is a new guitar. It's time for a tele.

[txstrat]

I also never really liked the speaker I put with it, a weber 12A150A.
5F4 and 5G9 are always on my short list of things to build,...
What I really need is a new guitar. It's time for a tele.

Speakers are the most improtant factor IMHO. Look at the 5F6A design. It sounds completely different in a Bassman compared to a JTM45 where most of the difference is the speakers. Theres a Jensen C12Q in my 6G3 and as I said it sounds beautiful.
BUT... 5F4 is what I really love. I've built a 5F4 with a 6G11 phase inverter (mentioned this somewhere on this forum already) and THAT is the sound I was looking for.
And BTW... could one ever have enough guitars?