Rudy said:

Yes, but better how? It really depends upon the sound you want to make. A good example is the artist BECK. He is known for using really crapy guitars.

That's right. The only "rule" in music really, IMO - you can of course play a "wrong" chord. If you wanted to play it.

MickG said:

I did read that in a Beck interview once..he said he could get a cool sound out of any guitar. I can see that. But you're probably not going to get much more than that out of a $50 piece of crap. The electronics are going to be noisy, it's not going to hold its tune, the intonation is going to suck. But at least you can drop it on concrete and not think too much about it

Rudy said:

The Music is within.

If the music isn't within, the most expensive guitar will not be able to get it out of you.

If the Muisc is within, you can make beautiful sounds with a tin can, rubber bands and a radioshack microphone.

MickG said:

That's not the point. You can make music with anything, but if you want to commercially viable pop/rock music (altough why the hell would anybody want to do that?) you'll need certain type of gear at this day and age.

MickG said:

I'm not saying you have to get a $5000 Les Paul custom to make listenable music. But if you're happy with a tin can, rubber bands and a radioshack microphone, I don't believe you've got the Music within you anyway. You just enjoy twanging and clanking sounds. More power to you.

Novabreaker said:

Not according to several pop bands and artist that don't use that stuff.

I use to think, if I had this or that then I could do this and that. Now, that I have this and that, I realized, it has to be freed from within.

MickG said:

Wow this thread has made for one very interesting read. A lot of good points
were made and as usual the topic is highly subjective.

My take on the topic is that having access to great gear is fine, but actually being able to play your instrument well is more inportant. High-end equiptment is going to help you in a live situation if your chops aren't up to snuff.

On the other hand you don't have to be a virtuoso or a gear gear whore to produce good music.

For years I was under the impression that my playing would miraculously make this huge leap If I could only get X piece of gear. Only to find that adding a new guitar or effect to my signal chain didn't improve what was flowing from my fingers one iota.

I did eventually did improve but my developement certainly wasn't porportional to amount of gear I aquired.If that was the case, I'd be famous by now!(LOL)

I've witnessed time & time again great music being made using less than hip gear. It really comes down to the player, their ears, hearts & fingers.
I've seen the same players "step up" to what was claimed to be better stuff....
guess what they still sounded like themselves.

As far as Prince is concerned, I have a serious love hate relationship with his guitar tone. Especially when it seemed to me his tone had become really abrasive & ladeled in effects. When you got that much going on in your signal path what guitar you use really doesn't matter since you're only using the guitar to trigger note. I'm really a fan of much of his earlier stuff anyway.

As far as the Hohner is concerned I'm sure he ditched the original pick-ups some time ago, last I heard it was loaded with Lindy Fralin pick-ups, white pick-up covers magic-markered black, I'm sure thr marker has no affect on it's tone though.(LOL)


-KSTRAT-

anyone care to list the guitars in Prince's arsenal? We all know about the Hohner, the Clouds, the symbols, the ugly Roland thing, and now the Floyd Rose Strat...besides these I really don't know what he's used on his records

MickG said:

Sorry, don't agree. As someone who has made his daily living out of recording young bands I can assure you that there is nothing that'll piss off the engineer more than a bunch of uninformed youngsters booking studio time with that kind of "...but we got soul!"-attitude. In my view it's not much more than yet another romantical myth that the industry wants to sell its customers as an assurance of authenticity. It really shouldn't be the engineer's job to spend countless of hours cleaning up the mix afterwards if the customers stubbornly want to use their substandard gear that is not optimized for the recording process. Some things just do not work in most occasions and it's really hard for people with these kind of romantical viewpoints to come to accept it.

But they'll always learn it the hard way, then.
[Edited 3/9/06 8:38am]

Rudy said:

You may be right when it comes to professional recording, but I´ve watched a music magazine called Tracks on Arte TV the other day , it was about musicians in Kenya and Kongo and believe me, even though they were using old, rageddy guitars WITH JUST ONE STRING and broomsticks with a thread as a bass guitar substitute , their blues music was very good and soulful, so they definitely had the music inside.
I could not believe my eyes and my ears when I saw it..unbelievable.

And yes, it was blues music based on the American blues played with some old, broken guitars, not African instruments with just one string...was really interesting to watch and hear.

KoolEaze said:

You can make music with absolutely anything, BUT the point is you can't make absolutely any type of music with absolutely any type of gear. This is what I am myself mostly nagging here about. Electric guitars are very hard to record, the modern sound that people are used to these days can be quite a task to achieve. I don't think most people who just listen to the music realize this at all. It is not an easy job for the engineer, it's nowhere nearly as effortless as some romantics would like it to be.