Uncle Larry speaks the truth!!

ejecta

ejecta

Roadie
Messages
951
“99% of tone is in the hands” is an argument as old as the guitar forums but when one of Nashville’s top session guys says it….. there’s some weight to it. I’ve personally practically had the exact same experience he described with a guitar, amp, and cab and two of my guitar playing buddies… the tone changed when each one of us took a turn and we were all pretty much at the same level of musicianship and same pick so those factors weren’t at play.

 
Totally agreed in that the player makes all the difference. It's kind of funny (and frustrating) how people can seem to forget or just not realise how important the human playing the physical instrument called guitar is to the whole process.

We've all seen these comments on guitar videos through the years from people like "why doesn't my rig sound like that, I have all the same stuff????". Gee, could it be possible that you're forgetting the most important element required for music...the musician? :idk

Even music made with sequenced MIDI virtual instruments sounds it's very best when a human massages the performance data to sound more musical, or is played in manually by a real person in the first place. The humanity is the point! Music is art! GAH
 
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I watched that earlier and man he really nailed it. At least for chasing gear...the only reason you want to get the same guitar/amp/effects as your heroes is because of the great songs they wrote and their playing.

For me just about anything I do ends up sounding kind of like me. The amps if they're in the ballpark sound close (like higher gain or cleaner). Same with pedals, they end up being pretty close.

It makes a lot of sense to really focus on the playing side of things. I like that Tom towards the end after what I thought was a pretty good video mentioned he needed to actually talk about something useful (like playing).
 
Season 5 No GIF by The Office
 
Destined for The Inferno!! :LOL:

This discussion never goes well, and, as I recall, didn't end well the last time it was discussed on this forum.
 
Guy is married with a family. Pandemic strikes. Has notion to start Youtube channel. Hmmm???
Seems innocuous enough.

Fast forward and the guy ends up divorced, and churns out more videos than ever.

Probably all just a coincidence.
 
Guy says, "Gear is not what is important."

Guy has the best gear $$$ can buy.

Hmmmmm...... :idk
 
I would never claim 99% of tone is in the hands, that doesn't sound right as a percentage - too high.

But seriously? Some of you guys don't believe that different people produce markedly different tones on the same gear? I've witnessed it myself.

Or are we only disagreeing with the percentage here... Or are you all just enjoying the trolling? Did I just fully swallow the bait? 🤔
 
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I agree like 70% of tone give or take is the player for sure, but the rest is definitely gear or other tones as in from pedals and stuff. I mean you're not going to get the same delay tone in a $50 nux most likely compared to strymon timeline, meris lvx no matter who touched it.
 
We should make it a rule that if you want to participate in a “tone is in the fingers“ thread you have to include a video of you typing the post with a gagball in your mouth.
 
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