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I think most people can remember when they went from “I plug my guitar into this and it makes sound” to “Man, I’m not digging how this sounds” and the endless journey of finding a tone you’re content with.
Mine started fairly early on, around 2.5 years after I started playing and it was entirely because I was reading all these Eric Johnson interviews where they kept talking about tone. I had a general idea of what “tone” meant, but more of “This is distorted and this is clean”, not much else. At the time I was playing a MIM Strat into a Fender Champ 25 and the only way I could articulate what I was hearing was “Eric Johnson’s tone sounds like 2000 grit sandpaper, mine sounds like 60 grit sandpaper”. I was on the bridge single coil, tone knob all the way up with a fairly sh*tty sounding dirty channel, it sounded like straight ass.
My dad’s a drummer but had a fairly decent understanding of guitar gear and he really didn’t waste any time trying to help. He yanked this dual-band rack EQ out of his stereo system, found some RCA-1/4” jacks and then started showing me how to sweep the EQ sliders to eliminate/add frequencies to the signal. I was so f*cking stoked he might as well have handed me an AxeFX. I remember spending that whole weekend just experimenting and finding out what worked and how to get closer to the tone I heard in my head. I’ve contemplated buying this same gear now so I can hear what it sounded like.
All that said, I still didn’t know sh*t about tone until I was 17 or so and had enough gigs under my belt to realize how things translated in that environment….as well as what happens when you stick a mic on an amp and the shock that hit my face when watching a video of a live show where I thought I sounded great.
Mine started fairly early on, around 2.5 years after I started playing and it was entirely because I was reading all these Eric Johnson interviews where they kept talking about tone. I had a general idea of what “tone” meant, but more of “This is distorted and this is clean”, not much else. At the time I was playing a MIM Strat into a Fender Champ 25 and the only way I could articulate what I was hearing was “Eric Johnson’s tone sounds like 2000 grit sandpaper, mine sounds like 60 grit sandpaper”. I was on the bridge single coil, tone knob all the way up with a fairly sh*tty sounding dirty channel, it sounded like straight ass.
My dad’s a drummer but had a fairly decent understanding of guitar gear and he really didn’t waste any time trying to help. He yanked this dual-band rack EQ out of his stereo system, found some RCA-1/4” jacks and then started showing me how to sweep the EQ sliders to eliminate/add frequencies to the signal. I was so f*cking stoked he might as well have handed me an AxeFX. I remember spending that whole weekend just experimenting and finding out what worked and how to get closer to the tone I heard in my head. I’ve contemplated buying this same gear now so I can hear what it sounded like.
All that said, I still didn’t know sh*t about tone until I was 17 or so and had enough gigs under my belt to realize how things translated in that environment….as well as what happens when you stick a mic on an amp and the shock that hit my face when watching a video of a live show where I thought I sounded great.