more important: guitar or amp?

  • Thread starter Thread starter OverlookFran
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the reason i'd get the amp first is because a good amp will make you hear better what you're playing. it will help you play more cleanly and improve your dynamic sense.

the same way people often say the monitors are the most important part in a studio setup. so i think if you want to improve your playing, a great amp with a mediocre guitar is better than a great guitar and a mediocre amp.
 
A few more thoughts....

Hey guys....just a few other factors.....Guitar woods(basswood/Mahogony/alder/etc..)do make a difference in tonality + the amps speakers...and the pickups in the guitar.

I am thinking about it this way.....say you have a $2000 budget to get an amp and guitar.....I don't own anything shitty, but if I only had this budget, I would get a $700 guitar, and a $1300 amp.

Point is, you can get by with a pretty nice guitar and a good amp, but couldn't get by with buying a $1300 guitar and a $700 amp
 
No-Brainer (fo' sho!)

After 5 seconds, I knew the right answer.

The Guitar

Why?

Ask the question again, but be more specific this time.

"more important: acoustic guitar or amp?"

Now what say you?

But even more important, you need the guitar to play & fret so that your technique is best utilized and the feel and/or response is tailored to your strongest (and weakest) points.

Did I just make sense? :eek:

Sure the amp makes a world of difference on an electric guitar...but so does a pickup, strings, even nicer cables. (do I need to bring up stomp boxes?)

But the basic sound and feel is the guitar itself.

The only time I'd say it was the amp first, was if you're playing hard thrash metal.
In this case you're just banging on chords, you could be playing several stringed instruments through a high gain amp
Heck, you could probably string up a wooden tennis racket with a few guitar strings, then somehow mount a pickup on it...No need for frets, just palm mute everything and never let the strings ring!

*I hope somebody got a laugh outta that*
 
Flame Time!

AaronK said:
..."a good quality, very musical amp contributes, IMO, much more than any guitar would to the overall sound of a song. It adds texture and harmonic content that the guitar can't on its own."
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True.

But so does a stomp box...hey what about a Roland Guitar synth?
Does that make more difference? :D

I would think so. But I guess this would be stepping out of bounds, so to speak. :rolleyes:

(my life story)
 
I've got more guitars and amps than some small music stores, I like variety. If i was to ever have to choose I'd keep 1 or 2 good guitars and all the amps. Good amps bring out the best of any guitar. A good set up will make almost any guitar play well but a good amp will make almost any guitar sound better.
 
Old thread alert.

Most of the original posters have probably got a life by now.:D
 
amp

I own some great guitars and some cheaper guitars.

if I'm playing through my deville i doubt anyone can tell the difference between my mex tele and my american.
 
Dani Pace said:
I've got more guitars and amps than some small music stores, I like variety. If i was to ever have to choose I'd keep 1 or 2 good guitars and all the amps. Good amps bring out the best of any guitar. A good set up will make almost any guitar play well but a good amp will make almost any guitar sound better.
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ditto to all of this.
 
I am one who plays the amp as much as the guitar if not more. If the guitar feels good and the amp doesn't it will affect my playing. I have always been one that can grab any of my guitars and plug them into a great sounding amp and get great tone. On the flip side, if I grab one of my best guitars and plug into a junky amp...... well, you get the drift.
 
What's more important......

the engine or the transmission?

the train or the track?

the sun or the rain?

the arms or the legs?

the big head or the little head?



there is a reason why its been 5 years since anybody asked such a brainless question..... we are trainable after all. :D
 
I can take any Epi POS or Squire or probably Rogue and run it thru my Mesa Blue Angel and make it sound great.
I know this for sure 'cause I've done it.
I could take a $10,000 PRS and run it thru a crappy amp and it'll sound like crap so I'm more inclined to go with AMP.

It has been very interesting to see the varied responses.
 
This is a dumb question and discussion. Of course it's the amp. Every guitar sounds the same when you put the amp on 10, which is where it should be.
 
i have shit guitars, a shit amp, and I cant play for shit...so I think the synth is the most important :D
 
kcearl said:
i have shit guitars, a shit amp, and I cant play for shit...so I think the synth is the most important :D
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You need to get those synths you hit with sticks.

You know the sort gerg has.
 
Hmmm.... tricky question.

The guitar is important for its feel, setup, string gauge, pickups, neck radius, etc..
They all affect your playing and sound.

The Amp only plays a part in your sound. ..maybe a tad of the dynamics..

Ergo, I'm inclined to go with the GUITAR.. Since you can still spot spectacular playing, or a magnificent song through a bad amp.. Hell, even acousticly!
..but if you're guitar isn't playable for you, you'll sound like shit through ANY amp.

Troll that one.:cool:
 
The amp. That's what translates whatever tone you get from your guitar, into what the audience hears. If the amp is crappy, your beautiful guitar tone will basically get lost in translation. My brother's Gibson Les Paul sounds mindblowingly crappy through his Roland Cube-15, but through my Marshall AVT20 you get everything you want from it. To compare, my friend's Ibanez Jumpstart guitar, quite possibly the worst guitar possible (with the exception of my first electric guitar ever, brandless piece of shit), sonically, and it actually sounds pretty reasonable through my amp.

Your guitars are good, so now you'd need a good amp to get the most out of them.

(This is all from your perspective though, in other cases it important to get a good guitar first to be able to put your playing to good use.)
 
I'm going with the guitar. I've got quite a few guitars, and a couple of them just don't seem to sound bad through anything. My les paul standard and my edwards are great through anything I've tried them through, but many others sound shit through everything (unfortunately).

Obviously the amp is the "loudener" and it makes the "largest" difference in that regard. But the guitar is the source. You can have the very best amp in the world but if you're playing a shit guitar, you'll just end up with a loud shit guitar.

Same goes with recording. You can EQ or compress or otherwise treat a sound however much you like, but if it's shit to begin with, you're in trouble.

And if you take it to the extreme, you could record with a guitar and no amp, but you can't track with an amp and no guitar, so for me, it's the guitar hands down.

That said I am thinking in terms of good equipment though. This means tube amps and "good" guitars, not practice amps and squiers (although I am a fan of the jap squiers). I would never consider gigging with them so they don't come into the argument (for me).
 
I can plug one of my humbucker guitars into each one of my several amps...and it sounds differentwith each amp.
I can then take any 3 humbucker guitars and plug each of them in turn into one amp...and they all sound pretty close.

While it's true that the build and wood of a guitar will contirbute to its sound...when it comes to electric guitars, it's the PUs and then it's mostly the amp that provides the meat of the tone.
A couple of decent guitars with decent PUs and a stable of nice amps is the better way to go, though a higher-end guitar may have better playing feel than some cheap ones...but that's a different consideration.

If you want lots of tonal variety...invest in more good amps (and maybe some good pedals)...though having lots of guitars is nice too, even if it's just 'cuz they look so puuurrrty. :)
 
I've found that when I leave either one out it sounds funny.
 
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