Loud stage volume is where good quality front of house sound goes to die.
Guitar players that have loud stage volume to get "their tone" are a menace and to be avoided at all cost!
Aside from this, tone matters to the audience, just on a different level than it does to us. Most audience members will simply classify the band as a single entity "loud", "great", "OK", etc. Good guitar tone is only PART of that assessment.
