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Which is more important to your tone... amp or guitar?


MichaelSaulnier

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Last night at band practice, I was playing several of my guitars through my Mesa F-50. All of them sounded very nice... (I do have nice guitars)...

 

One of my bandmates was selling another amp, a low cost Fender, on CL, and the person was scheduled to come check it out right at the end of our rehearsal.

 

When the guy arrived, my bandmate, a drummer, asked me to plug into the Fender and the whole band played a song.

 

Whoa. I was using my Fender American Deluxe QMT, which just "sings" through my F-50... but it really did not sound so good through this amp... we tweaked it a bit and tried again, but imho, we NEVER got a decent sound out of this amp.

 

The guy buying it didn't seem to care, (I don't know why he didn't try it with his own guitar and played it himself), and he ended up buying the amp... but it made me realize that no matter how nice your guitar is, the amp has just as much, if not more, impact on the tone.

 

Honestly, my F-50 makes all my guitars sound good, even the el-cheapo squires I have...

 

So if I had to choose... I'd make sure I had a decent guitar, and a great sounding amp... not the other way around.

 

How about you?

 

M

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In general, I'd rather play a piece of {censored} into a nice amp than the other way around. I find that if my amp settings aren't right, the sound is bad no matter what guitar is plugged in, whereas I can get decent tones from any guitar if I've got the sweet spot dialed in.

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I typically say amp.

 

Without taking into consideration the whole tone in the fingers thing, think about this.

Play a $2k guitar through a 100$ amp. Your tone will sound like a 100$ amp.

Play a $100 guitar through a $2k amp, and you have a great starting point.

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I have to say ...

 

My 1969 Super Reverb gives me the basics of my tone whether I'm playing a Strat, a Tele, my LP-alike Vintage Lemon Drop, my P90-loaded PRS Santana SE or even (for slide) my Ibanez DT-150 w/Super Distortionesque V2 humbucker.

 

Naturally there are variations, and the FEEL of the individual instruments always counts for an awful lot, but ...

 

As Muddy Waters once said of HIS Super (and I'm paraphrasing from memory), 'If I forgot my guitar and had to borrow one at the gig, but I still add my amp ... I'd have my sound.'

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The amp has way more effect on your tone than anything else, IMO.

That said, it doesn't have to be a really high end amp to sound great. My favorite amp cost me all of $200.

But yeah, a good sounding amp will make most guitars sound pretty good.

A great guitar will sound like {censored} through a {censored}ty amp.

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...That said, it doesn't have to be a really high end amp to sound great. My favorite amp cost me all of $200...

 

 

This. I currently play through a Fender Pro Jr and a Tech 21 Trademark 10 - neither of which will exactly start the folks on HCAF drooling, but I can get some nice tonez out of either.

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You guys are deluding yourselves. Everybody knows that truly good tones only come from $150 cables. Doesn't matter what is on the ends. At least that's what they told me at Guitar Center when they tried to sell me a cable made of stranded platinum.

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The amp has way more effect on your tone than anything else, IMO.


That said, it doesn't have to be a really high end amp to sound great. My favorite amp cost me all of $200.


But yeah, a good sounding amp will make most guitars sound pretty good.


A great guitar will sound like {censored} through a {censored}ty amp.

 

This post nailed every point.

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The amp has way more effect on your tone than anything else, IMO.


That said, it doesn't have to be a really high end amp to sound great. My favorite amp cost me all of $200.


But yeah, a good sounding amp will make most guitars sound pretty good.


A great guitar will sound like {censored} through a {censored}ty amp.




what my WV friend said here...:o

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