Just curious about it. Any artists, any recording, what song made you go, "HOLY SHIT that's THE TONE!", and why?

for MOI:
Stevie Ray's LIVE version of Texas Flood, off of Live at the El Mocambo. Why? the strings sound like they're iron bars, the tone is about as fat and rusty as you can get. I like a guitar that sounds like it's got some serious hunch on it.

Close second would be Van Halen's Drop Dead Legs and/or Best Of Both Worlds.

otan said:

Y'know Otan we have a lot in common (musically speaking, of course) as I love these tones and new exactly what you were talking about when I read this.

The entire El Mocambo dvd goes through various tones and emotions. It's so brilliant it's hard to just pick one (for me). Drop Dead Legs, is cool too.

The Stones, Monkey Man (something about the rawness)
Prince, his fuzzed out solos (pick a song, bootleg, whateva)
Jimmy Reed - The blues song "Ain't got you" (just love it's rawness)
Hendrix - The Winterland Concert (it's not of this earth)

Of course this list could go on forever but these are just a few off the top of my head.

(You're) My World by Joe Satriani from the album 'Joe Satriani'. The lead tone is out there with the best of 'em.
In fact, the whole album is wicked!! Check it out...

Prince - Sign O The Times (MTV Music Awards 87)

Allan Holdsworth - Road Games and Metal Fatigue CDs and his stuff with Bill Bruford and Tony Williams

Eric Johnson - Venus Isle CD and his instructional video.

Larry Carlton sounds great with both the 335 and the Strat.

David Williams - On the Michael and Madonna stuff.

Jimi - Little Wing on Hendrix In The West and Live at Montery

Frank Zappa - Zoot Allures

Jeff Beck - Live At The Fillmore (this is a boot from the Rod Stewart days. Also the There And Back CD

Steve Vai - Passion And Warfare CD

Nile Rodgers always has that perfect Strat tone.

Stevie Ray Vaughan - Lenny

Eddie Van Halen - The First CD Through the 1984 CD.
[This message was edited Tue Aug 26 10:21:42 PDT 2003 by cranshaw62]

In my book the best tones that i ever heard were,

Brian May lead guitar tone: Loud and beautiful

Slash studio bassy lead tone: On solos like november rain and estranged

Steve vai: for the love of god

Ritchie Sambora: on SNL live playing the guitar solo of always

Pantera: the tone on cemetary gates

Pet metheny: clean tone for some jazz

Prince: for the funky tones

STEVE VAI has the greatist tone I have ever heard. satriani has great tone too, but gets boring with it.

the worst tones:

Pearl Jam live: the tone of the guitars sucks live, what the hell is that

Death Metal bands tone: BEsides carcass and Death

Any punk hardcore group

7salles said:

Yes, how could I forget this man. Amazing tone.

Ritchie Blackmore and his Snakecharmer scales but also his amazing use of tone.

Jeff Beck - Guitar Shop displays some diverse tones but so does his entire career.

Slave2daGroove said:

Yeah jeff beck is the shit. "Blow by Blow" should be a part of every guitarist's cd collection.

I was at Ozzfest the other night and saw Zakk Wylde do an amazing fucking guitar solo. That was definitely the best "live" performance I have witnessed directly.

I'm a tone philistine, I suppose. The tone I like best is a clean, compressed transisitor amp-style sound like Roger Troutman and Prince both had in the early 80's. I also like effects like the Boss compression unit: zero warmth. I might add that I prefer my japanese tele to my LP, tone-wise. This year, I turned 30 and decided to give in to my inner needs, which I had been ignoring since age 13. I traded my old Fender tube amp for a Fender Princeton and my Tube Screamer for a Boss Distortion. I recorded my band's last demo from my compressor pedal straight into the desk. (I kept the guide track cause I liked the sound so much) I blame P for screwing me up tonewise at an impressionable age...

Definatly gotta be roben ford on Menage et Trois by the Yellow Jackets. So smooth & flowing

The ultimate guitar tone without doubt has got to be Hendrix's Voodoo Chile (the slow blues version) track 3, Electric Ladyland.

Frank Axtell (of course):

http://www.frankaxtell.co..._Tres.html

http://www.frankaxtell.co...Joesef.htm

http://newfunkorder.com/D...ifesto.MP3

The guitar is a custom strat built by Kevin Kaufman, in West Palm Beach, FL. Kevin used to repair all of the late Jaco Pactorius' basses and also produced the Jaco signature bass for Fender. The pickups in my "Kauftone strat" are Seymore Duncans 59's, neck and Tom Anderson PAF's, bridge. The amp is a Peavey Special 130 single 12' 130 watt RMS combo.

Shure SM 57 mic , DBX 160x compressor/limiter, Lexicon PCM 80 digital effects processor (reverb), Rocktron Intellifex effects processor(flange/delay).
[This message was edited Fri Sep 26 11:43:54 PDT 2003 by yamomma]

Jem said:

Yeah I love Beck. Sorry, Jeff Beck. Blow by Blow is the dogs bollocks. Thelonious, is the funky dogs bollocks bollocks.

I like the tone in Nadia (You Had It Coming, although maybe he did it before)...it has such a sweet ethereal delay to it which is just perfect for the emotional ambience of that piece. Also off of that album, when I first heard the opening crunchy overdriven riff to Dirty Mind (an instrumental Grammy Award winner!) I was like, OH MY F***ING DOG. It has an industrial (ala techno) sounding attitude to the tone that say, "right you muva funkas, you are about to get reeeaaal fucked".

Yes, I was sober.

Oh, and I don't know about you guys, but although the Edge might not be the most technically proficient of guitarist, I do love his use of tone throughout Achtung Baby. When I first heard it, it sounded so fresh and original. He isn't a shredder, but can use space and tone fantastically imo.

[U2 shout-out edit]
[This message was edited Fri Sep 26 16:15:29 PDT 2003 by MaggotBrain]

I love SRV's most of all, but Buddy Guy has this raw, I don't know how I got this tone, kind of thing going on. Mixed with his way of playing like he never was taught a day in his life that gets me everytime.

Prince's clean tone in The bone, Calhoun Square, Lady Cab Driver for funk tone.

I like Kurt Cobain's tone as far as distortion goes for it's crazy rawness, but then I like a real tight distorted feel like say from Dimebag Darrell from Pantera.

For solo's, I always thought prince had really colorful effects and such that worked perfectly it seemed.

And SRV I cannot argue w/ as far as tones. he sounded good.

Add a little Trey Anastasio, and I think I'm covered.

Take it easy,
zach
burly
www.soundclick.com/burlyus