The guitar in Jackson Browne’s Late for The Sky is utter perfection.
One modern band, Real Estate, have a great guitar sound. Check out the song “Green Aisles.”
Te para tres Soda Stereo
I’m really quite surprised that no-one mentioned Leslie West playing Mississippi Queen.
What about Billy Gibbons playing “Just Got Paid Today”?
What about David Gilmour’s solo for Money?
Eddie Van Halen on the debut Van Halen album?
Agreed - all great tones.
Lately I have been grooving on **Ron Wood’s **tone with the Small Faces / The Faces. A lot of his work is very Gibsony - bassy, blatty and farty sounding - kinda like John Lennon’s tone for Revolution (Wood does nice work here with a clear, acrylic Dan Armstrong guitar). Listen to the start of Stay With Me, live. I would never think to target that tone playing on my own, but I LOVE how it sits in the mix - perfect for boogie rhythm. And sometimes he uses more Fender-type single coil tones - like here, with a great, great song, Three Button Hand Me Down. Starts with a great bass intro, then an acoustic strums in followed closely with some nice Fender-toned electric fills. Just great.
Would have gone DG on “Comfortably Numb” if I had to fuck a guy, I mean, you know, if I had to, it’d be Elvis. Or, wait, Gilmour. (Don’t get excited, it’s a line from the movie “True Romance”)
Billy Gibbons – that’s also really tough to choose. Off top of head, “Jesus Just Left Chicago”? Something off “Tres Hombres,” probably. Or, that tight compressed odd sound off the First Album. Sounds like he was playing through a really small tube amp pushing it.
Yeah, earlier, I corrected myself about the L7 – that really fat hollow bodied on the cover of “Idle Moments.” I guess that’s an L7 – I played an ES 335 once for about two minutes, and only know the ES330 from pictures.
You know what’s weird? Playing keys and playing guitar are pretty much the opposite – the chair of the electronics engineering department said “Hey, weird, since you play keys, you should be able to make anything on a breadboard easily.” Not true – piano keys are finger sized, whereas guitar strings are wire-sized, and they’re meant to be pulled, not pushed, so much. I build circuits like other people do surgery – always pliers, and it doesn’t seem natural. I’m just a glorified hand drummer, but getting to the nitty-gritty, having the feel for the strings – the way you can make them do what you want. Also, the barre chords – that’s totally opposite of playing keys. Like bending your knee the wrong way past the patella (yes, I’ve done it – limped for a few months).
Fuck it, I will start playing guitar again as soon as the money get’s sorted out. And it’s all thanks to this little thread! Thank you OP!
Definitely Comfortably Numb, playing his old '56 Les Paul Goldtop with the old soapbar pickups. Sublime.
I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide- the low-end rumble he gets when he does the lead (starting 1:38 in, he plays a lick and the rumbles it and repeats 3 times) - just running the US Quarter he uses for a pick on the Low E. That’s tone.
Yeah - keys and guitars are different beasts in so many ways. I sit in front of a piano and wish I could make it do…anything!.
I was thinking of not posting this because originally it was just the bass, but the tone of all the instruments except the drums, but including the singing, are perfect in Best Looking Boys for the mood they are trying to accomplish (not that the drums are bad mind you.)
They are so perfect that even though it’s my second favorite song ever, the main reason I like it is the tone. The lyrics, inventiveness, and playing aren’t very much above average. The combination of the straightforward bass with the slightly Smiths-jangly guitar completely set the plaintive and nostalgic mood by themselves and are a much better match (tone-wise) for emo-style singing than pure modern pop punk is.
More than two years and nobody mentioned Steve Morse?
I didn’t realize this is a 2 years old thread. I saw Dixie Dregs play in a small club once… a long time ago though. An awesome player… he sure has his own phrasing.
Never heard of them or the song. Well described - I hear what you are saying.