Tonal Confusion. You don't have to choose, you can enjoy it all.

[PFDarkside]

Re: Tonal Confusion. You don't have to choose, you can enjoy it all.

I have been reading quite a bit about Splawn (and listening to clips when I can). Its various desriptions do sound like the right amp, but I did just plug into a Stiletto Stage II last week and I think its got the sound I hear in my head (it did in the store) - I couldn't confirm that until I had at home for some time and did some recording with it a bit - that will have to wait for a few months.

...though, it would be funny to have the same rig as another froum bro!

The Stiletto was my other choice, I never got a chance to play it because GC had none in stock... I just decided to pull the trigger on a Splawn on ebay going only on clips and suggestions. I'm sure I'd be just as heppy with the Mesa, too. I've always been disappointed by Marshall's recent offerings, and although I like pedals I don't want to have to rely on one to get a decent amount of gain with an older Marshall.

How "Mesa" does the Stiletto sound? It seems like more of a Brit inspired Mesa tone than a true Marshall sound to me, but that's just from clips I've heard.

 

[wahwah]

Re: Tonal Confusion. You don't have to choose, you can enjoy it all.

You'll get my Vox out of my cold, lifeless, dead hands you sick freaks. I see right past your schemes....

Was it really that transparent?



Cheers..........................wahwah

 

[The Golden Boy]

Re: Tonal Confusion. You don't have to choose, you can enjoy it all.

I know what works for me, I know what makes me uncomfortable to play with.

Pigeon-holed?

I don't know, I do what I do, and at this point have a good idea of how to get what I need from the things I've used.

 

[wahwah]

Re: Tonal Confusion. You don't have to choose, you can enjoy it all.

I know what works for me, I know what makes me uncomfortable to play with.

Pigeon-holed?

I don't know, I do what I do, and at this point have a good idea of how to get what I need from the things I've used.

It took me two paragraphs to attempt to say what you just said in two sentences. I really must work on being more succinct.



Cheers.......................wahwah

 

[J Moose]

Re: Tonal Confusion. You don't have to choose, you can enjoy it all.

It took me two paragraphs to attempt to say what you just said in two sentences. I really must work on being more succinct.

HAHAHAHA

I don't know about that... I liked & agreed with most of your post from before... can really relate to the mentality of seeing amps & music gear as "tools".

In my case... I guess there's a distinct difference between what "I" like as a player and what the job requires...

As a producer it's really nice to have a collection of stuff that can cover a lot of bases... everything from '60s Fenders up & through the modern high gain stuff.

For my own playing I'm really into single channel amps with lots of stompboxes & fuzz... Jeff Buckly meets Band of Gypsies...

But there are times when I'm asked to, well...sometimes told to 'ghost' guitar tracks in for someone who can't play well enough to be on their own record and then I've either gotta match an existing sound or one-up it... and that's where the depth comes in...

Still...

I'm a picky mo-fo.

I love everything pretty well equally, but an amp/guitar/widget absolutely HAS to be useful for me to keep it around...

One-trick ponys are totally allowed as long as it's a good trick!



















Doesn't mean I won't ride the unicorn most of the time...

 

[drew_half_empty]

Re: Tonal Confusion. You don't have to choose, you can enjoy it all.

man, the word tone was used so many times

anyhoo yeah i'm with xander, we all appreciate different sounds but finding our own is like a collection of all the things we like, and we can't all afford to have lets say, the robin trower amp, the hellacopters amp, the setzer amp, the sabbath amp, and the isis amp. Wow, those are all the things that i want.

but yeah man, your tone is like what you like best of them all put together, and you can use different amp settings & guitars & whathaveya to bring out each one of those individual sounds

it's pretty cool actually

 

[Gearjoneser]

Re: Tonal Confusion. You don't have to choose, you can enjoy it all.

I guess my main point in this thread is that you don't have to pigeon hole yourself into one thing, and say you hate other things. I know that most people can't own everything they want, and are forced to choose what fits them. However, it's stupid to say you hate something, just because you haven't found a use for it, or couldn't afford to own it.

I think what inspired this thread was the realization that we're a bunch of spoiled gear whores. I'm the guy with the title 'Gear Ho' but I'm not as snobby about it as you'd think. I think most gear in this day and age is perfectly good, and I honestly like almost everything. It's rare for me to hate a particular guitar or amp. I've visited extremely poor areas in the world, and have seen truly crappy gear being used by musicians who know that it's all in the fingers and brain. As much as I like being a gear afficionado, I know that it's all about music, and I can enjoy anything from cheap junk to high end.
Nowadays it bugs me to see players "hate" anything.

I guess what made me think of this was remembering my 3 weeks in Honduras this summer. I borrowed a horrible Esteban guitar, and used sandpaper to set it up. I was grateful to even have a guitar to use, and I made it work.
I used it to play music with local musicians at a beach resort, and kept my words about gear to myself. It felt odd jamming with guys who appreciate $100 guitars, knowing I had a complete arsenal of guitars with handwound pickups at home. It was a dose of reality.

 

[Vasshu the humanoid typhoon]

Re: Tonal Confusion. You don't have to choose, you can enjoy it all.

Man most of my pedals that I make are probally more expensive than most of my guitars these days
My Kramer is probally the most highend of my guitars now....the rest are cheap stuff....somehow these run of the mill things just work in a funky way for me....
I blame Kev

 

[Bludave]

Re: Tonal Confusion. You don't have to choose, you can enjoy it all.

There's something I've noticed amongst a lot of posts and players who post on the internet. It's the idea that there's tones they love, and amps they love, but ones they don't for some reason. You may notice that I talk about highgain amps and vintage amps equally, and the reason is that I love and appreciate both.

Music, and being a guitar player, is just like being a painter choosing colors.
I've never said I hate Soldano, and only love Blackface Fenders, or I hate Tweeds and only like vintage Marshalls. Or, non master volume PTP is better than channel switching PC board amps. I love all of them, because they all bring out the best of me with a guitar in my hand. I've never understood tone snobbery, as if it's the only tone you can like. As a modern musician, I'd think that most players would learn to like anything that makes a good sound.

What are your thoughts on this issue? I think it's funny that someone would pigeon hole themselves as a Fender, Marshall, Mesa, or Vox kinda guy. Why choose? If you can play more than 7 notes, why not have more than 7 tones at your disposal? I guess I'm someone who will drink good beer, crappy beer, Coke, Pepsi, 7Up, or anything without feeling like I need to be devoted to only one. It's music, not devotion to 1 brand.

My thoughts are pretty much the same. I've always felt that a guitar player/musician has to select gear for a particular project to get the sound the project calls for. When playing Live you should whenever possible get to the facility that you will be playing to get an idea of the size of the room. This allows us to select the right amp for the right sound. If you are playing a small room a Deluxe Reverb would probably be a better choice than a Twin Reverb.

When recording its a little different in the sense that you may need a lot more tools to really get the sound you want. I like to bring 3 sometimes 4 amps when recording. Sometimes you just don't know what is going to work the best. Experimenting is really helpful.

Bottom line is I am open to plugging into just about anything. The tone does partly come fromn the amp and partly from the guitars, but it also comes from your touch and your mind. I recently plugged in to an Amped SS70W channel switching amp, and even though it was not a great amp it was far from bad, and in a pinch I could have made it work.

 

[LesStrat]

Re: Tonal Confusion. You don't have to choose, you can enjoy it all.

my

 

[Binnerscot]

Re: Tonal Confusion. You don't have to choose, you can enjoy it all.

How "Mesa" does the Stiletto sound? It seems like more of a Brit inspired Mesa tone than a true Marshall sound to me, but that's just from clips I've heard.

Not as "Mesa" as the Mark or Recto series. It doesn't sound whiny and nasaly, like most of the Marshalls I have heard in the last decade or so. It sounds like a Marshall with growl, bark, and snarl, it even grunts, it is very British sounding...but the way I hear it in my head.....I was rather impressed. Its very dynamic, and lacks the traditional Mesa compression - in a good way. Very cool amp.

They just need to replace the Road King's channel three (even though I get great sounds from it) with the Stiletto's high gain channel and I would only need one amp. I think of those higher gain marshall sounds from the thrash and hair metal bands of the 80s, and it nails those without any effort, plus the rest of the gain levels are just as entertaining. Mesa stepped outside themselves with this one.

...the sales guy and I cranked it up for a good 30 minutes, and he loved the Crazy 8s in my Jackson (which he sold me). It surprised me that he liked them so much because he is a Tele/ES335 type guy.:33:

 

[Hot _Grits]

Re: Tonal Confusion. You don't have to choose, you can enjoy it all.

yeah Joe, that's exactly what i think.

I'm impossibly broad in my tastes and work on a variety of projects. This month, I've had to make a guitar sound like 60s soul, Beano-era blues, QOTSA stoner rock, reggae clean, pschedelic fuzz detonation, Bo Diddley scratch, Angus Young blues rock, afrobeat squawk and sub-Setzer rockabilly. I even had to demo an Uberschall for a bunch of hardcore guys.

When you make records and work in more than one style you quickly learn that pieces of gear are tools, and one set of tools will work for a job in a way that another won't.

So while there are certain pieces of gear that resonate with me and some that don't, I find there's an application for everything. And my gear reflects that: I try and have amps with all the major tube types to get a variety of sounds, and I choose guitars to cover different tasks.

But either you like a bunch of different stuff or you don't. While i always laugh when someone says they're eclectic when they listen to Slayer and Led Zeppelin, there are some people out there that just like one thing, and that's cool, perhaps even essential to master something. There's no one way to skin a cat.

 

[daemon barbeque]

Re: Tonal Confusion. You don't have to choose, you can enjoy it all.

For me there are two categories of gear
1)Wich inspires me
2)Wich don't.
So anything else is BS for me.If it works and sparkles ,i dig it.If not ,i don't.

 

[kevlar3000]

Re: Tonal Confusion. You don't have to choose, you can enjoy it all.

I am inspired by tones, not tone. Never gig or record with the same amp, cab, or guitar. I am always rotating. I get inspiration from all the gear I have. An open mind always stays open....

 

[Dr.Mavashi]

Re: Tonal Confusion. You don't have to choose, you can enjoy it all.

Guys like WahWah and Hot_grits cant "afford" brand loyalty or brand snobbery, due to the fact how much ground they have to cover sometimes. Me I listen to a great variaty of style of music and get inspired by it, but when it comes to me picking up an axe and pluging, sorry, the only thing that gets my juices flowing and the only thing I sound decent playing is very specific type of Heavy Metal. So obviously I am gonna be into a very limited line of products ... sort of. I am a bit of a marshall snob because I think that there is a bit of value issue there as the build quality is not what it used to be, and most of the marshall standard in hardrock/heavy metal is more of Modefied Marshall standard and on top of that the fact that most of my influences that played marshalls, played pre JCM800 marshalls definately a different era in marshall's history. So when people talk about the prices of todays or JCM800 re-issues as completely justified I wonder did they really think about it. But I am very set as far as guitars, nothing feels even a mile close to the comfort and ease as a maple neck no fretboard strat does to me,
so thanks to this place I've decided I am just gonna slowly build up a collection of alder, swamp ash, maple, basswood, etc body strats and experiment with pups in them.

For me there are two categories of gear
1)Wich inspires me
2)Wich don't.
So anything else is BS for me.If it works and sparkles ,i dig it.If not ,i don't.

Oh dude, come on now, for once can you have a straight forwad opinion on something, your political correctness is just so not metal dude ....