carlosguardia
New member
Well, I've been playing the guitar for about 15 years now, and the electric for a little over 10. Ever since I started to play the guitar, the idea was to emulate the style, chords, notes, solos, leads and wardrobe of my favorite guitar players; at the time, these players were Randy Rhoads, CC DeVille from Poison, Adrian Smith and Dave Murray, Kirk Hammet, Eddie Van Halen, Marty Friedman, the guys from Skid Row, and Richie Blackmore. Well maybe I'm leaving a couple of players out but it has been a long time. The purpose of playing the guitar was because I felt it was really cool to make all those hair-raising sounds like artificial harmonics and two hand tapping; and in doing this, be able to get popular with the "bad" girls from high school.
When I started taking guitar lessons, I began to learn about music theory and harmony, technique, technique, and a little more technique... but very little if anything about the sound of the electric guitar; almost nothing about EQ, and only the basics of what my fingers can do to affect my tone.
As time went by my taste changed (not too much) but I learned about other guitar players and stopped listening to some. Mainly what changed was that I began trying to not only emulate some licks but started to think about what my guitar should sound like, other than being distorted. I fell in love with the guitar sound of 2 players, Paul Gilbert and John Petrucci. To my surprise, or not, both used guitars built with basswood and both used DiMarzio Tone Zone pickups. Then I decided to buy a a guitar made of basswood and install the Tone Zone in the bridge. I got close to the desired tone but I needed to EQ a little to get the "right" sound out of my amp. I began to isolate their sound, pass it through a spectrum analyzer and get a mental picture of the way the EQ should be set up so I could tweak a 7band graphic EQ to that sound.
In that process I developed my own sounds, which may not differ too much from Petrucci's sound on Images and Words or Gilbert's sound on Lean into It, but still I NOW consider to be my own tone.
What does your guitar tone sound like?! Some food for thought.
Carlos
When I started taking guitar lessons, I began to learn about music theory and harmony, technique, technique, and a little more technique... but very little if anything about the sound of the electric guitar; almost nothing about EQ, and only the basics of what my fingers can do to affect my tone.
As time went by my taste changed (not too much) but I learned about other guitar players and stopped listening to some. Mainly what changed was that I began trying to not only emulate some licks but started to think about what my guitar should sound like, other than being distorted. I fell in love with the guitar sound of 2 players, Paul Gilbert and John Petrucci. To my surprise, or not, both used guitars built with basswood and both used DiMarzio Tone Zone pickups. Then I decided to buy a a guitar made of basswood and install the Tone Zone in the bridge. I got close to the desired tone but I needed to EQ a little to get the "right" sound out of my amp. I began to isolate their sound, pass it through a spectrum analyzer and get a mental picture of the way the EQ should be set up so I could tweak a 7band graphic EQ to that sound.
In that process I developed my own sounds, which may not differ too much from Petrucci's sound on Images and Words or Gilbert's sound on Lean into It, but still I NOW consider to be my own tone.
What does your guitar tone sound like?! Some food for thought.
Carlos
