The Best Tones of YouTube

[State of Epicicity]

I'm curious which YouTube guitar channels generally have the best tone? YouTube's algorithms keep recommending the same people, but I'm interested in finding more.

 

[Jarick]

Dunno about new, but Paul from The Studio Rats consistently pulls amazing tones out of devices that I cannot.

 

[PLX]

I'm curious which YouTube guitar channels generally have the best tone?

Jim Gaustad nails the early EVH tone.

 

[Orvillain]

Blake Mansfield, our very own @MirrorProfiles gets very nice tones, and I also have to give a shout-out to @2112 - all three of these guys get tones that I hear and I go "oh wow, I WANT that tone!"

Also a shout out to Stefan at The Pedal Zone. He's not a high-gain or even a "rock" guy at all really. But what he does with delays and reverbs is really inspiring.

Where as some of the other bigger more respected guys simply don't do that for me.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Blake Mansfield, Zach Wish.

Jason Tong and Eddy Lenz’s tones are always great.

Leon’s videos are great too, especially the amp demo ones where he’ll showcase different tones. I think i’ve subconsciously started (very badly) doing some of the noodling phrases Leon does, and it drives me nuts when I notice it

shouts to a friend of a friends channel who dials in rad tones:

https://youtube.com/@dominikignacik9736?si=DVkL07npP7bNGOqn

and my buddy Piotrek: https://youtube.com/@siwy666?si=5dSRK9DDUf2n3ZL9

and the worst tones are Glenn Fricker and Tony Mackenzie

 

[State of Epicicity]

Thanks Dudes. This helps a ton. I'll be checking out all these recommendations. Leon Todd and Brett Kingman were two I knew for sure, but I feel like YouTube put me in algorithm prison haha.

 

[JasonE]

Shawn Tubbs, Michel Nielsen, Pete Thorn. These guys always sound great.

 

[the-trooper]

Rick Graham

 

[Life Eats Life]

Eddy Lenz
Simon Dorm
Me.

 

[State of Epicicity]

Dunno about new, but Paul from The Studio Rats consistently pulls amazing tones out of devices that I cannot.

Okay, I had never heard of this channel. Freaking amazing. This is exactly what I was hoping for.

 

[unix-guy]

I don't subscribe to any channels but stuff I do enjoy that weren't yet mentioned:

John Cordy
Paul Davids
Rotem Sivan

You've probably already got them, but also:

Martin Miller
Tom Quayle
Matteus Asato

 

[2112]

I'll throw a few in that haven't been listed here yet;
Euge Valovirta - always has massive tones.
David Levi - killer blues player and sweet tones
Plague Scythe Studios - great in depth analysis on classic amps, lots of great metal tones
Lamb Chopper - Nails classic thrash tones, Aussie AF, has parrots
Andy Wood - He's Andy Wood. 'nuff said.
Pedal Partners - a channel devoted to shoegaze tones.
Marco Fanton - Some of the best guitar faces and tones.
Clifton Wright - Does a lot of retro rack and pedal stuff, INSANE playing. Brent Mason meets Paul Gilbert.
James Lugo - loads of in depth studio stuff, did one of the original high gain amp shootouts on YT
Tim Miller - All his stuff on YT is largely jazz/fusion instructional stuff but he plays with such an amazing touch.
Our own @BROCKSTAR is always super inspiring to listen to, especially with the more experimental/ambient tones.

 

[unix-guy]

David Levi - killer blues player and sweet tones

I look forward to his posts on the Fractal Forums, they are always great!

 

[The other John Browne]

Euge Valovirta might have the meanest sounding 800 on the tube and his tones are always dope, Kyle Bull, Leon Todd, BouGear, Johan Segeborn, Killertonetexas, Lasse Lammert, Mendel bij de Leij,, RezaMatix, Ed S. (who is MirrorProfiles here as someone has mentioned) and Zach Wish are among my favourites

 

[State of Epicicity]

Euge Valovirta might have the meanest sounding 800 on the tube and his tones are always dope, Kyle Bull, Leon Todd, BouGear, Johan Segeborn, Killertonetexas, Lasse Lammert, Mendel bij de Leij,, RezaMatix, Ed S. (who is MirrorProfiles here as someone has mentioned) and Zach Wish are among my favourites

I forgot to mention Segeborn; he has a great ear. Leon has incredible tone, playing, and analysis. I just discovered Leij, and I thought he had some great moments for metal tone from the little I've sampled.

 

[State of Epicicity]

I find it completely perplexing that YouTube doesn't recommend many of these channels to me. Instead they recommend either the same few people over and over, then a bunch of the stupidest looking videos that have nothing to do with what I searched for. It's like the goal is to distract you and piss you off. I always feel like I've entered a huge library, but assholes keep coming up to me flicking flyers in my face when I'm trying to learn something. I truly feel like the algorithm is meant to dull the intellect.

These recommendations are a treasure trove to me. Ironically I've only had time so far to check out Studio Rats, and that one dude is freaking awesome. I mean, tone to die for, nuanced playing, and he seems cool.

The thing that truly destroys me is when I feel like someone you're going to for information feels like a used car salesman.

 

[State of Epicicity]

One more addendum to my rant: Google gained dominance over search by providing the most relevant searches, by honing its algorithms to the most intuitive and least time wasting layout of information, results one can usually trust to be relevant to what you actually wanted to find. They are so advertiser focused now it diminishes that, but it still is gold standard, so much so that AI search is vying simply to equal it.

But YouTube? I would never guess from using it that it's owned by Alphabet. It makes me think less of the parent company overall. I don't use social media like the Meta products for personal use; I don't enjoy it. And YouTube feels like a trash heap version of that stuff: click bait titles with bold neon and someone making a stupid face, which is meant to entice you, when it completely repels me.

When my searches are not tone based, I've taken recently to using a YouTube transcript extraction website simply to skim the text and try to get right to the meat of the substance.

When I first started listening to podcasts, I found a trend where a show looked interesting, but then someone who had prepared nothing talked about their weekend for five minutes at the top of the show, before sauntering lazily into the substance. Luckily I've found many great podcasts since then.

But with podcasts I'm not fighting the platform itself. YouTube feels like a florescent colored gauntlet with hidden gems, but wrapped in kids' candy wrappers.

Social media companies hired psychologists who consult casinos in how to keep people inside and starting at a display, and I think their architecture is nowhere more naked than YouTube.

 

[laxu]

One more addendum to my rant: Google gained dominance over search by providing the most relevant searches, by honing its algorithms to the most intuitive and least time wasting layout of information, results one can usually trust to be relevant to what you actually wanted to find. They are so advertiser focused now it diminishes that, but it still is gold standard, so much so that AI search is vying simply to equal it.

But YouTube? I would never guess from using it that it's owned by Alphabet. It makes me think less of the parent company overall. I don't use social media like the Meta products for personal use; I don't enjoy it. And YouTube feels like a trash heap version of that stuff: click bait titles with bold neon and someone making a stupid face, which is meant to entice you, when it completely repels me.

When my searches are not tone based, I've taken recently to using a YouTube transcript extraction website simply to skim the text and try to get right to the meat of the substance.

When I first started listening to podcasts, I found a trend where a show looked interesting, but then someone who had prepared nothing talked about their weekend for five minutes at the top of the show, before sauntering lazily into the substance. Luckily I've found many great podcasts since then.

But with podcasts I'm not fighting the platform itself. YouTube feels like a florescent colored gauntlet with hidden gems, but wrapped in kids' candy wrappers.

Social media companies hired psychologists who consult casinos in how to keep people inside and starting at a display, and I think their architecture is nowhere more naked than YouTube.

I used Google for ages because it provided relevant searches but now find that DuckDuckGo is often more reliable. Google seems to heavily favor advertisements and stores in its search results, where a manufacturer of a product get absolutely buried by stores that sell said product.

On YouTube enshittification has taken even more root by pushing content makers to things like "make longer videos by repeating the same talking points because the algorithm favors that" stuff. There are even browser extensions that skip about the first 30-60s of a video because it is likely to contain no valuable information. For searches it often gives you very few results until it starts giving you unrelated "recommended for you" crap. Then you have the Shorts nonsense which is just trying to mimic Instagram and Tiktok. On top of all that they are pushing ads down your throat so heavily that using YouTube on anything that isn't a desktop/laptop computer with a competent adblocker is annoying as hell.

All of these video platforms have the same issue: watch one video of anything and it will keep feeding you more of similar content. I never post anything on Instagram but have an account for following some friends. My feed is almost entirely composed of cute animals because that's the only content I've liked. Which is fantastic, I just get more cute cats, dogs, alpacas and more! But imagine if one of the first things you did when using one of these services was liking a video from some shitstain like Andrew Tate, some far right channel etc. Your feed would be an echo chamber of bullshit.

 

[The other John Browne]

I find it completely perplexing that YouTube doesn't recommend many of these channels to me. Instead they recommend either the same few people over and over, then a bunch of the stupidest looking videos that have nothing to do with what I searched for. It's like the goal is to distract you and piss you off. I always feel like I've entered a huge library, but assholes keep coming up to me flicking flyers in my face when I'm trying to learn something. I truly feel like the algorithm is meant to dull the intellect.

These recommendations are a treasure trove to me. Ironically I've only had time so far to check out Studio Rats, and that one dude is freaking awesome. I mean, tone to die for, nuanced playing, and he seems cool.

The thing that truly destroys me is when I feel like someone you're going to for information feels like a used car salesman.

The library thing might be the best analogy I have ever heard

 

[itchyfingers]

My band recently did a livestream on YT, where we played for an hour, then did a quick interview. Before we left, they asked us to do a quick "short" and plug the site and the store. Guess which one will get more hits? The damn Short. People's attention span is maybe 3 seconds these days.