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Your Pick of the Top 20 Guitar Sounds of All Time


Anderton

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I'm curious of your opinions regarding two categories, raw sounds and "produced" sounds with amp, effects, etc. I'll get the ball rolling....

 

Raw sounds:

 

Tele bridge pickup with volume rolled back just a tad to bring in the highs

Rickenbacker "Rick-O-Sound" with the boosted treble

Les Paul neck pickup with treble rolled back for "creamy" distortion

Strat out of phase middle pickup sound

 

Produced sounds:

 

Mark Knopfler's "Sultans of Swing" guitar sound

Hendrix "Little Wing"

Clapton Bluesbreakers

Jeff Beck "Cause We've Ended as Lovers"

Early Pete Towshend rhythm guitar (e.g., "Can't Explain")

Dave Gilmour solo sound with Pink Floyd

Chet Atkins Gretsch sound

Wes Montgomery L5

Santana's singing, smooth PRS tone

 

Your turn...!

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I second the clapton bluesbreakers shout.

I'll add;
Jonny Greenwood's (radiohead) solo on Paranoid Android.(Mutronix Mutator)
Radiohead's (again) 12-string acoustic arpeggio fest on Jigsaw Falling
Rammstein's 'wall of cabinets sound' on Mann gegen Mann.
Richie Valen's Harmony guitar. La bamba, We belong together etc
The guitars on the over-dubbed version of Buddy Holly's Love is strange

For some reason i cant stand Carlos Santana..

Wait! No, i remember. Its because he's terrible, yeah that was it :lol:

[/opinion]

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Glad EC's bluesbreakers was mentioned. That's one of my favorite tones, especially on Ramblin'.

Raw:

Rick + Vox.
Strat + Ampeg Reverberocket

Produced:
Knopflers tone's on Shangri-la.



Fix'd



He sounded so much better when he was playing an SG with p90s through a super reverb. :poke:

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For novel electric tones I still get a kick out of the earley primative stuff using effects like Fuzz and reverb. Bands like, the Stones, Iron Butterfly, Doors, Hendrix and many others who were on the cutting edge of getting "new" sounds. It wasnt only the tone, its the scales first used by musicians and the mixture of all the different musical types thrown together that really made them stand out. Many of those tones continued to be mimicked ever since.

 

Everything is so tamed and pocketed now in comparison what you used to hear. Theres so littel experimentation that gets into the music any more. If it does its highly processed and calculated to the point that its lost all its raw edge. I miss the days where all the experimentation was new and both the odball and tight sounds all got released on albums. I think if a musician is confident enough to take a littel criticism, he should be willing to take more chances doing things that clearly express some creativity in both tone and composition.

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Donald Kinsey on "Waiting In Vain" by Bob Marley

 

 

I think that was Junior Marvin,he joined the band before Exodus was recorded

 

Rory Gallagher on everything

Dave Murray/Adrian Smith onThe Number of the Beast,Powerslave and somewhere in time

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Raw -
P90 bridge in a mahogany slab cranked through a Fender Twin in an ISO room
PAF bridge through Marshall Plexi cranked
Tele bridge through AC30 just on the verge of breakup
Strat neck through any good clean amp
anything played through an original script logo MXR Phase90

Produced -
Jim Martin's Gibson V or LP throug Dual Rec on FNM's Angel Dust
All of the guitar tones on Steely Dan's Gaucho
Jeff Buckley's verbed out Fender through Fender tones
Brian May, all
Josh Homme, all
Trey Anastasio's tones with his Mesa Mark rig
John McLaughlin's tones on the early Mahavishnu albums
David Gilmour, all Pink Floyd albums he was on
Jonny Greenwood's tones on The Bends and OK Computer
The Edge's tones from Unforgettable Fire to Rattle and Hum
Carlos Santana's early 70's tones - SG through Fender?
Murray/Smith, all early 80's Maiden Albums
Mike McCready's tones on Mad Season

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RAW:

 

Tele neck into 6L6 equipped amp for "bloom" and on the bridge for hair raising rock.

 

Strat into a Fender or Bassman.

 

 

Favourite tones:

 

 

Eric Johnson around 1989-91 (the "classic" Ah Via Musicom tones)

 

2nd the sounds Trucks gets, + Hendrix into Marshall stacks loud with fuzz and wah.

 

Holdsworth on any album really, (consistently great tones)

 

Shawn Lane's later very clean and compressed sound, and his early 90s sound.

 

Stevie Ray Vaughan's Tubescreamer into Twins/Deluxes defined an era and people are still stealing/borrowing it to this day.

 

Perhaps Slash into Marshall Silver Jubilees.

 

SD JBs into JCM800s

 

Vai from his mid 90s era, live, for gorgeous ear splitting tones. (That's 10 so far)

 

Malmsteen in mid 80s (before Oddessy album) gorgoeus singing neck pickup tones, stinging bridge (think "I Am A Viking")

 

John Sykes on Whitesnake's 1987 (e.g. Crying in the Rain solo).

 

Another vote for Van Halen on VH1 (again, transformed an era, knocked guitarists on their ear. Eruption, anyone?)

 

Brian May's versatile tones from one guitar and many Vox AV30s, treble boosted (live and on albums, Night at The Opera, principally).

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Mudhoney - touch me I'm sick
Steve Albini(especially on the shellac albums)
Duane Deinison - The Jesus Lizard & Tomahawk

Mark knofler on sultans of swing I'm not even a fan of the music so much as I just love hearing the tone of the guitars.

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