Best/Worst guitar tone in rock music

Best: Steve Albini.

*STOP LAUGHING

Worst: pretty much all nu-metal guitarists, Kurt Cobain on _Nevermind_, John Mayer, Eric Clapton

Worst: Thats hard. All tones can be interesting is used correctly. Even that really thick tone that Godsmack uses; except I think they use it wrong.

OTM

Also, Mike Rathke, who has a similar guitar tone.

worst: Weezer, Jeff Buckley live

Oh, and Link Wray, who invented his own distortion by punching holes into the speaker cones of his amp with a pencil. Predates Albini's antics by, oh, a few decades.

Worst: anything too jangle-y or clangy.

But it's hard to see past Lloyd & Verlaine. (Was surprised when I saw them live how many of the lead lines Richard Lloyd took. All these bits I'd presumed were TV.)

Both Queen and Television are impossible to imagine without the guitar sound - it carries the character of the band. (Same would go for the Pixies too.)

Best is anyone who's playing a Tele or a Jaguar through a Twin Reverb.

Worst tone: P.O.D.uddle of Nickelsturbed Park

Best tone: Eddie Hazel

*whimper* To me this is like being given a stained-glass window, then suddenly dipping it in creosote.

Worst - Puddle Of Medd type crap, of course.

I think Beck also has very good guitar tones, esp. on Midnight Vultures...DANO ALL THE WAY BAY-BEE!!

I would add Ed O'Brien, Jonny Greenwood, Stuart Braithwaite, Norman Cook and Robin Guthrie to the list.

That's not old-fashioned, that's just good taste.

Adrian Belew, first 2 1/2 solo albums and all '80s King Crimson.

Clapton on the live part of "Wheels of Fire"
Jimi on "Band of Gypsies"
Pete on "Live at Leeds"
John McLaughlin on "Jack Johnson"

Worst and best in the same package "Trout Mask Replica" (tone so bad it's good)

LOL Scots really do love their Big Star! Constantly hear them played in shops and so on in Glasgow

This is true

Was big star popular in scotland before teenage fanclub?

How do you think Teenage Fanclub happened?

I assumed that they took an obscure influence and made them more popular. Like, found a copy of #1 record in a thrift store or something.

Clarke B. is otm upthread

Fred Frith in that golden period of Cow -> Bears has the worst guitar tone I've ever heard, I mean, I love it, it sounds like he's deliberately taking the piss out of tone obsessives

00s Wire also has awful, awful guitar sound. I saw them live in 2004 and they were using the tiniest most "digital-modeling" amps they could find. It ruled

Zappa

Jimmy Nolen

(for best)

Euronymous's guitar tone on solos on De Mysteriis was like a dying mosquito, though the overall tone they used for their riffs was awesome

Love that echo-ey spindly sound Stacy Sutherland had with the 13th Floor Elevators.

I assumed that they took an obscure influence and made them more popular. Like, found a copy of #1 record in a thrift store or something.

Well, I wouldn't want to exaggerate how popular Big Star were, they were known to a certain constituency of indie kids in Glasgow, like the members of Teenage Fanclub for instance (Glasgow is (was?) The Indie City after all). Teenage Fanclub didn't discover them or anything, I'm not sure they popularised them either tbh.

Albini's tone rules

I can't tell if zappa is being nominated for best or worst, I guess both at certain points

He deployed a bunch of different tones over 25 years, but I can't think of any that weren't carefully crafted. One of my favorite solos by him strictly in terms of guitar tone is "Holiday in Berlin, Full-Blown."

Richard H. Kirk, early Cabaret Voltaire

Sticking to people I don't see mentioned above...
Good: Helios Creed in classic era Chrome. Greg Ginn (who is about the only guitarist I can think of that makes solid state amps sound good). Phil Manzanera is oft overlooked in the tone department but there's some footage of Roxy around 73 that has the best live guitar tone I can think of. John McGeoch pretty much encapsulated all that is good about UK post punk.

Bad: I find it difficult to even listen to music with bad guitar tones. 90's Mesa Boogied out heavy rock & Joe Satriani Ibanez locking trem types are the worst. Possibly followed by strangely processed, sometimes flamenco-ish acoustic guitar breaks that seemed popular in pop music for a while in the early to mid 2000s.

Worst - Steve Hillage circa Motivation Radio
Best - Daniel Fichelser from Popol Vuh seconded

ha I'm a sucker for bonehead guitar-store dudes like Satriani, whose double-chorus pedal is one of the ugliest stompboxes ever designed

Best: Michael Rother was the first name to spring to mind. Or for someone not already mentioned, Roy Montgomery.

Couldn't think of a worst until I read
00s Wire also has awful, awful guitar sound

yes. yes it does. That can be worst.

jj cale best, also neil. i dig knopfler too, television of course

can't think of 'worst'

As much as it pains me to say anything negative about Wire I think Colin Newmans current set up is pretty painful. Fortunately the fact that it's still Wire makes up for it wholesale.

best: east bay ray / jandek / d.boon / deerhoof dudes (obsessive beefheart tribute/ref?) / craig flanagin / arto lindsay / glenn phillips '69-'75 / zappa / mark mcquaid / bill orcutt / norman westberg / scott cortez

worst: allan holdsworth / mick barr / abercrombie post gateway / fennesz

I love Nick Blinko's tone on the Rudimentary Peni albums produced by John Loder. Especially on Death Church.

There's some really terrible sounds on some of the mid-era Van Halen.

I mention both of these because there's a good way to combine chorus and distortion... and many many bad ways.

@ Oblique it is painful but it seems deliberately so?

Re: Michael Rother = best, I agree, I saw him live recently and his guitar sound was fantastic and super loud and I said so to somebody afterward, who dismissively responded "he runs the guitar through his computer and uses an Ableton distortion plugin, that's it".

What is that effect/tone on the solo in "Fool in the Rain"....that's my favorite

@Flamboyant Goon - A friend of mine was their touring engineer a few years ago and I can confirm it's painstaking precise in it's execution.

you can say what you will about Satch but he gets good tone imo

I'll just get my coat

Death Church is fucking AWESOME

@ Iago Galdston, its an MXR Blue Box:
http://www.jimdunlop.com/product/m103-blue-box-octave-fuzz

Craig Scanlon had the best/worst guitar tone, for sure. My favourite example is the intro to The Fall's Sheffield Uni show from 7 Jan 1993 if you can track it down. Horrible riff, awful distorted sound. But fantastic.

faves:

Spacemen 3 (both of them)
David Roback (Opal, Mazzy Star, Rainy Day, etc)
Richard Franecki (F/i, Vocokesh)
Hendrix
Greg Ginn (grudgingly)

Bo Diddley / Peggy Jones

Walter Becker, Mark Knopfler, Kurt Vile

I feel like in different eras Garcia could be best and worst.

I like this thread.

I feel like some of the worst guitar tones are so bad they become a trademark and therefore great. Like, D. Boon, cranking the treble on his Tele so that it kind of hurts, but perfect for the band. Same with Albini and his sound: meant to be ugly, and works for him! I agree that a lot of the synth dudes like Holdsworth sound like space-butt. Or some onanistic shredders, like Satriani. I watched his rig run down once and I could have sworn he had a pedal that artificially shortened or lengthened his cord. There's a metaphor in there ...

When in doubt a good go-to for best guitar tone goes to Mike Campbell. What a classy act.

My "worst tone in the context of a great band" award goes to Michael Karoli. I assume that sounding paper-thin was some kind of artistic statement.

Best: Tony Iommi on the first four Sabs albs, Tony Hill on High Tide's 'Sea Shanties', Jutok Kaneko, Keiji Haino 80's-90's (before the pedals took over), Caspar Brotzmann, Marc Bolan on 'Jewel' and 'Elemental Child', Lou Reed on 'I Heard Her Call My Name', Neil Young circa 'Arc/Weld', Malcolm Young in the 70's, Helios Creed '78-'83, Ted Falconi, Daniel Ash in very early Bauhaus, Gary Mundy in Ramleh (but not in Breathless) esp. in the mid-90's, Maki Miura (in Shizuka mainly), Munehiro Narita, Norman Westberg 80's, Lee & Thurston on 'Confusion is Sex'.

Worst: that horrible Strat switch position everyone used in the 80's (esp. with chorus pedal + lazy harmonic strikes), post-Vai/Satriani shredders generally, blues lawyers generally, anyone who piles on too much in the way of FX, Stephen O'Malley

What about bass? would say that John Wetton in King Crimson 73-74 would take that easily. Almost makes one forgive his later crimes.

Marc Bolan on 'Jewel'

yessss

Ted Falconi

oh hell yes

abercrombie post gateway

This quote from 12 years ago reminded me I used to like the first Gateway album, but I relistened the other night and my appreciation for his tone on that has really disappeared.

I figured this revive would be for Steve Cropper — but he's nowhere in the thread!

So: STEVE CROPPER ffs

Seconded

Yep

Last night I dipped into this Wilson Pickett bio I own but have yet to read (pvmic) and found a somewhat amusing anecdote from a guitar player who got what he thought would be a dream job of playing in the Pickett's band, but then when he actually played some authentic Steve Cropper licks from the recordings he got yelled at by the Wicked One himself and was told "don't do that shit!"

you know who has great tone? joe walsh. even on the songs i don't really like

> David Roback (Opal, Mazzy Star, Rainy Day, etc)

Specifically "Rocket Machine". That tone sells the whole song. POO guitar tone.

Yeah, Joe Walsh is good. Trying to recall if I've told my story of seeing him and his famous brother-in-law in the audience at a club once. Joe ended up sitting in with the band and proved what a star he was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgEYF8od2Ck

my son keeps watching virtuoso bass guitar noodlers on youtube and they all insist on such low action that their curlicues and fancy-ass tapping sound like no more than a bunch of arbitrary trebly fret buzz

Adrian Utley on Third has some incredible tones

I think malkmus' tone is generally very good, and truly excellent on American Water…

did another ctrl-f on this thread and the only Beck mentioned is ... Beck.

So also: JEFF BECK ffs. One of the most recognizable guitar tones in music imo. Liquid silver that guy.