How much better would his tone be?
Could you imagine some of the custom one off Fenders?
The marketing posibilities.

wus wrong with da tone?

ufoclub said:

nothing. this guy is just a n00b who hates Prince.

workingupahiyellasweat said:

Not any better than it is.

I've said it a million times before on this site and I'll say this once again, Prince's guitar tone is not like it is really because of the brand of guitars he uses but because of all the other extra gear (and he's got loads). The Hohner might have cost like 5 bucks from the second hand store he originally bought it in the 70s, but if anybody thinks buying a Hohner alone will "give you that Prince sound" then they'll be greatly disappointed. It makes a huge difference attaching a guitar like that to a small Crate amp compared to a 3000$ Mesaboogie. Hell even a banjo is going to sound crate attached to a Mesaboogie or Laney, or any of the other high-gear amps and FX processors he always uses.

actually, in the early days he played one.


"ice cream" edit
[Edited 3/4/06 22:00pm]

Novabreaker said:

of course that's a part of it but the BIGGEST part of tone starts in the heart of the player, and how he/she approaches the instrument with his/her fingers. same with any instrument... it's about your what you've got in your soul and how you use your body to express that more than gear. Prince still sounds like Prince without heaps of effects. something workinguphiyellasweat hasn't been able to understand so far.

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[Edited 3/4/06 22:06pm]

JPW said:

Believe me, if Prince played his Hohner Telecaster guitar through a small Crate amp Prince would not sound like Prince no matter how much soul he'd put into it. Fine for a demo recording, yet for most ears who have not accustomed to hearing anything else than professionally recorded music it would be just plain irksome.

JPW said:

The question is what if, nothing more nothing else.
Could you imagine the custom one-offs, etc.
It also helps to have some gear, lol JPW and you should know this.

Novabreaker said:

Hi. I'm a professional musician. I have boots of Prince recording on a boom box. It still sounds like Prince, whaddaya know!

If you know anything about musicianship, you should know that if you put Prince on an acoustic guitar, or unplugged electric, mucking around before he goes on stage to plug in... guess what? He still sounds like Prince, because he has developed a style! You have to do that BEFORE you go to the effects. Take for example early Prince guitar with just boss pedals compared to later work with Zoom effects.... still sounds like the same guy, right? I know I'm veering into condescension with this, but the reason is, TONE is MOSTLY up to you EAR and your fingers, or respective extremity, depending on your instrument. Effects only ADD to what is already there.

JPW said:

Thanks for pointing that out - now I should know at least something after I read what you just wrote there.



Hi. Nice to meet you. I record professional musicians and the one thing I've learnt over the years is that professional musicians usually know absolutely nothing about how professional results in music are achieved

OBVIOUSLY good gear FINALISES tone, but it is not the main ingredient. The skill and talent of the musician is what it comes down to.

Really good musicians can make a tin can sound musical. I once read that Brian Jones, the Rolling Stone, could make anything he picked up sound good. Any great musician can pick an instrument up, even clap his hands in a certain way and make it sound like it's his own and no one else's with or without effects.

Now again, effects are necessary in this day and age, but remember where the soul came from... listen to Robert Johnson and tell me he needed effects and a special method of recording in order for him to sound good... the quality is terrible, but he's rated as one of the finest blues players because of what he could produce JUST with his fingers and voice. And likewise, Prince would not be Prince if he hadn't at one time developed his style from a purely basic musical standpoint of basic tone as a beginner. Somewhere along the line he learnt that, probably playing a school amp as a kid with some budget guitar. Everyone and everything has to start somewhere, and tone is like that. For guitarists, it STARTS in the fingers. The rest is just decoration.

Novabreaker said:

I'm also an audio engineer.

JPW said:

Why are you preaching me about all these obvious things? Of course that's the way it is

I was just responding to the original poster's "how much better would his tone be?" -assessment. Cause most likely attaching a Hohner Telecaster to the rest of Prince's current rig is not going to sound any different than pluggin' in any other Telecaster. Does he really even sound that different on the Hohner than he does on the Symbol guitars these days?


(sorry, I didn't mean to be rude above... well, ehrm actually I did mean to be, but people here who know me know that when I am being mean I don't mean to be mean even if I actually do mean to be mean)

Novabreaker said:

hey no worries. it's a website. it's hard to be polite sometimes when you're vehemently trying to prove a point!

but i was pointing out the obvious because you seemed to be one of those people who don't understand tone and are purely relying on the technological aspect. which is why there is so much crap in the industry today... technology has got so good obviously that it can easily mask a horrible singer or musician. so my apologies.

so anyway, i'm just into honesty in music... production wizardry is fine so long as it's an honest performance to begin with. i think some of the rainbow children is a great example... great tone, organic sound, not overproduced, but produced well. you can still hear what the musos are actually doing.




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[Edited 3/5/06 3:39am]

JPW said:

Well, to be honest I'm rude sometimes just for the fun of it. I've been to the .org for quite a long time, and it's just a persona.



Sometimes I do however open emphasize that possiblity too. There exists dozens of current (electronic, experimental) musical genres where the technological aspect actually shapes the sound to its final form and there's not "much soul" to begin with. One could argue that it's indeed the polishing and the concentration on texture that brings the "soul" into the music - and this is just as genuine form of authencity as with older music traditions. With Prince, however, I don't think this has ever worked that well.

Novabreaker said:

Hi Novabreaker

As always, I´m quite impressed by your knowledge about technical stuff. Since I´m not a musician I don´t know much about these deatails. I have a question...you probably remember that interview with engineer Michael Koppelman during which he mentioned how difficult it was to record stuff that Prince played with the old Hohner. Now, my question is, why did he say that ? Why is it more difficult to create a good sound with that raggedy old guitar ? I mean, it does sound great during concerts, so what is the problem he´s talking about ?

Unfortunately, I don´t remember the thread, but I´m sure it was Koppelman.

IMO, if anything in "Prince World" is perfect than it's the Hohner. There are some recordings of "Head" from back then before he started doing this "electric man" stuff, where they just funked that sh*t away. Heaven.
Can't see anything wrong with his solo lead guitar tone either. But what do I know.

Novabreaker said:

yeah, i can agree with all that more or less. i don't think audio engineering is as nearly a developed art as musicianship though. it's still the frame of whatever sound has been recorded. music played average will still sound average no matter how well you shape and mould it, or snip it or bend it... and to real players it's just cheating which is why so many electronic acts are hopeless live... because they can't actually PLAY... i'm pretty old-world in that respect. i love some good production and electronic music, so long as the people who make it obviously aren't just cut and pasters... i basically think that's shoddy artwork... not on a par with the great visual cut and paste artists or cut and paste musicians like beck, because if you make the production your only claim to art you're just a really good frame-maker basically. you still need a song or a great voice to put IN that frame.


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[Edited 3/5/06 4:10am]

KoolEaze said:

Don't. I'm blushing.



Yeah, I remember something, but wasn't it rather about the hisses and the crackles the cheap mikes on the guitar itself were producing coupled with the amps he was using, than the quality of the tone itself?



I've never fiddled with the guitar since it's quite rare and no one else favours it, but my guess is that it might for instance give "plinky"(/thin) results when recorded. It might sound fine to Prince's ears when he is playing it in the studio, but when it comes down to the actual mixing process it could be hard to get it work in the mix - that is usually the stage where the cheapness of the instruments used most prominently surface in an unflattering way. All Telecasters are usually quite treble-heavy guitars (sounding very bright or nasal), so in that sense the funk thing evident especially from the early 80s records should have been relatively easy to achieve even on the cheap Hohner - altough this certainly is not the case with most low-budget electric guitars, which can be very mid-heavy, sounding very "dull". However there are always the issues of dynamic control, but I think Prince as a guitar player in general is quite seasoned handling out those things. I for one never learnt to play the guitar so well that I could do it well at all.

But to put it in short, most cheap guitars (or any other electricity powered instruments for that matter, I've found out that there is no exception to this phenomenon) lack enough treble or bass, resulting in a tone that is "unusable" in the context of professional music production. It's dull, lifeless, and you don't even want to hear it because thesa kind of sounds are avoided in music production like the plague (therefore our ears will not even collectively get used to them). The whole point in music production is to prevent the music from sounding embarrassing, which it quite usually will end up sounding if not done right.



I think the Hohner is greatly modificated these days, but even a great amount of hissing and such usually do not matter that much in a live situation.

Novabreaker said:

Wow...OK, thank you very much.

JPW said:

This goes off the topic, but see that's just the thing: the first sound source where you start working from doesn't even have to be MUSICAL at all.

I'd appreciate if you'd go see the org artists' community and maybe post a few comments of yours on a semi-humorous thread I am just about to put there.



Haha, I can admit to that. I for one suck goat's ass live. Which is why I don't even bother playing too much if I rarely end up in that situation.

I wonder what custom shop Fenders would have been made for Prince if he had picked up a Fender Tele.

Oh did I forget to mention, I am a professional composer and a professional music instructor, and oh yeah I am also a professional luther on the weekend.

Now, that should validate anything I post.

What's wrong with Prince's tone on the Hohner, ask any engineer he has worked with in regards to mixing it in. Furthermore, as someone pointed out these days

Prince is so murked in effects does he really sound that much diff on a cloud, tele?

It's like when he used that new Taylor on Te Amo, oh NM that's another topic.

workingupahiyellasweat said:

So you're like Jesus then?

How much mixing does Prince do on his own?

workingupahiyellasweat said:

Prince does play Fender teles, at times. He's a professional musician - he has lots of guitars.

Anyway your point is lost on me - Prince always always has fantastic tone from his setup. The guitar is just one small part of it.

As for signature series guitars, personally I am not a fan. I don't want some guy's name written on my guitar (aside from Leo Fender, obviously) and I'd rather find my own sound than ape Prince's.

Unless you are talking about a really crappy guitar:

No Guitar is "better/worst" then another guitar. They are simply diffrent.

MickG said:

As a newbie to guitar, I have to ask...why is one guitar more expensive than another? In other words, why does one guitar cost $10,000 at Guitar Center, while another is $100.00? I understand that the electronics may be different, or the wood may be different, but an electric guitar seems to be a fairly simple instrument compared to let's say, a Grand Piano.

What accounts for the differences?

Alasseon said:

You're right - there shouldn't be such big varioations on the price scale. There's a great deal of sheer bullshitting in that price range, however the pricier ones are always the best-sounding (no surprises there). However there are certain factors that contribute to even the manufacturing costs of an electric guitar. The quality of the wood used and especially the quality of the mics, which are the result of a quite long development process. Some guitars even go through artificial "aging" procedures, to give them a true vintage sound (As if they'd been manufactured decades ago).

But of course, asking more than 1000$ for an instrument like that is just cashing in on slack luxury value.

Alasseon said:

Wood and craftmanship is a big price changer. When I was speaking about guitars I was more talking about Solid Body Electics, that's not the same as a hollow body. Such things as Paint type, wood quality, electronics, and even advertising goes into the price of a guitar.

Acoustic guitars are diffrent. The quality of wood can really change the tone of an accoustic guitar and the quality of life.

MickG said:

I'm not sure I'd go that far.

My first electric was a Hohner Les Paul knockoff. It cost me $130 in 1985 & it sucked!

Now I play an newer Epiphone Les Paul and it rocks! I love it. It holds its tuning very well and just sounds killer. It cost me $400 used.

And I'm sure a $2500 "real" Gibson Les Paul would be even better. I know it would. $2100 better, I'm not sure about that. But certainly better.