Top 15 Favorite Guitar Tone ??

[Blaze]

How about this thread about people s top 15 favorite guitar tone ..
Let s keep it in the tone territory not in the best guitar player stuff..
Feel free if you have more or less then 15 ..

Here are mine :

1- Jeff Beck
2- Ritchie Blackmore
3- Alvin lee
4- Albert Collins
5- Robben Ford
6- Johnny Winter
7- Duane Allman
8- Scott Henderson
9- FZ
10- Buddy Guy
11- JM Hendrix
12- JM Page
13- Dereck Trucks
14- Bonamassa
15- Santana
+ Brian Setzer
+ BB King
+ Larry Carlton
+ Tommy Iommi

http://www.premiumseatsusa.com/concert/Jeff-Beck/images/Jeff%20Beck.jpg

[Spudman]

In no particular order.

Richie Blackmore
Jeff Beck
Robin Trower
John Mayer
Joe Bonamassa
Roine Stolt
Krister Jonsson
Alan Morse
John Mitchell
Andy Latimer
Philip Sayce
Eric Gales
Joe Satriani
Todd Mohr
Karlheinz Wallner
Kevin Gilbert

[cherokee747]

Walter Trout, Anson Funderburgh, and Robin Trower!! Mike

[Ch0jin]

Wow! How on earth did we get two lists of 15 without including Slash or Billy Duffy? I'm appalled!

So FWIW in no particular order.. I want to make sure a few get added...

1. Slash (to be even more specific, the combination of Slash and Izzy on Appetite, one of my top five albums of all time). The reason I don't play Strats ;)

2. Billy Duffy from The Cult. The solo from "Love Removal Machine" is one of my top 5 solo's of all time. If I buy a Gretsch one day, he is the reason.

3. Andrew Stockdale from Wolfmother. Not exactly an original tone, but if your a fan of vintage fuzz/rock tones then I don't think anyone comes as close to sounding like he should be 60 years old than Andrew. Get your SG's out!

4. Tom Morello from RATM. Very unique and original style with all his weird trademark noises. I saw them again just last year and that gig resulted in a whole bunch of Rage songs going back on my playlist. Maybe not the best tone, but his unique style puts him on this list.

5. Dan Auerbach from the Black Keys. Fuzzy fingerstyle alt.blues.rock. He inspired me to build my first Ge Fuzz and it's still my "Desert Island" pedal. He also inspired my to drop the plectrum and go at it with fingers.

6. OK so it's a bass guitar, but how about Les Claypool?

7. Dimebag Darrell (RIP). He took the preconception that to play metal you need a Les Paul/Jackson and a Marshall/Mesa etc, rolled it up and smoked it with solid state amps (Randall RG100H heads) and Dean guitars. Looks like tone IS in the fingers. In the video "Vulgar Video" the guitar sound when they are playing live in Moscow (I think the track is Domination) is the most brutally heavy thing I've ever heard.

8 & 9. I have to double up here because I'm not sure off the top of my head which guy played what parts, so both Jim Moginie & Martin Rotsey from Midnight Oil. If you like your tone to include a bit of surf rock style Fender reverb with a huge rock crunch that somehow manages to sound "clean" even though there's a wax melting level of drive going on, check out an early "Oils" album, 10-1 or Head Injuries especially. (they were quite Anti-USA back then though, you have been warned)

10. Stevie Ray Vaughn (RIP). I wouldn't say I was a -massive- fan of his music, I think my favourite track is probably his cover of Voodoo Chile, but as this list was about tone, he has it in spades.

11. Jimi Hendrix got a nod already, but I have to drop him in my list too. I would love to have heard that sound live.

12. Randy Rhoads! (RIP) The sound of Ozzy Osbourne! The sound of Metal!

13. Angus Young. Not my favourite tone, but an unmistakable rock sound that inspired so many more. I wonder how many SG's have been sold over the years as a result of Angus.

14. Peter "Dirty" Jones (RIP) from Cosmic Psycho's. Or as he was known to my mates back in the day "Give us some wahwah Dirty!" Dirty, loud rock guitar with plenty of, you guessed it, wahwah based solo's. I've tried twice to form a band to play the same kind of music. It's OK that you've never heard of them though, it's enough that LA band L7 cited the Psycho's track "Lost Cause" as the influence for the song "Fuel my Fire" that was then covered by Prodigy. I also have their tour poster from when they played CBGB's. I'm sure the sub genre "Yob Rock" was invented for them.

15. Finally, because there's talk of a FNM tour -without- him (which would be just bogus frankly) Jim Martin. I also have "The Real Thing" down as a top 5 album of all time, but Jim gets on this list for the guitar tone in the (best ever?) cover of War Pigs.

Well there you have it.

[sunvalleylaw]

I don't think I can list 15.

I will list my top favs:

John Mayer
B.B King
The Beatles on the second side of Abby Road
Rivers Cuomo
SRV
Brian Setzer

There are others listed already that I like very much. These are just a few that spring to my mind.

[Fab4]

Wow. 15, huh? Let's see, probably...in no particular order...and considering that one player might use any number of different tones:

Chet Atkins - Take Five (Chet Atkins Alone)
Robben Ford - Help The Poor (Talk To Your Daughter)
Larry Carlton - Room 335 (Larry Carlton)
Larry Carlton - Kid Charlemagne (Steey Dan, Royal Scam?)
Eric Johnson - SRV (Venus Isle)
Eric Johnson - 40 Mile Town (Ah Via Musicom)
Eric Johnson - Cliffs of Dover (Ah Via Musicom)
Angus Young - You Shook Me All Night Long (Back in Black)
George Harrison - A Hard Day's Night (A Hard Days Night)
George Harrison - All My Loving (Meet The Beatles)
George Harrison and/or Paul McCartney - Paperback Writer (Single)
Stevie Ray Vaughan - Tightrope (In Step)
Stevie Ray Vaughan - Riviera Paradise (In Step)
Lindsey Buckingham - Rhiannon (Fleetwood Mac)
Gary Richrath - Roll With The Changes (Reo Speedwagon, You Can Tune A Piano...)
Anthony Wilson - (all of Diana Krall Live in Paris)

Oops, that's 16...sorry...

[piebaldpython]

Hmmmm...other than some already mentioned.....this is ALL about TONE:

1 Bonnie Raitt (her Slide tone just kills me)
2 Stephen Stills (he uses his index finger like a pick and VOILA...TONE)
3 Mississippi John Hurt
4 Albert King

[wingsdad]

...considering that one player might use any number of different tones...:

Just the first that come to mind, no particular order of preference:

Eric Clapton I - LP/SG/335, B-Breakers, Cream 'woman tone'
Eric Clapton II - post-Cream, Strat
George Harrison - on the Rick 360-12
Keith Richards - Open G on that old Tele w/ 'bucker & 5 strings
Carlos Santana - 1st 2 albums on 335
Mike Campbell - on any guitar he plays, variety of great tones that fit
David Lindley - on lap steel (esp. Rick Model B) w/ Jackson Browne
James Burton - popped an unwound 3rd string on a Tele and cracked it open
Duane Allman - Strat or slide
Billy Gibbons - growl, bark, honk & squeal
Don Felder - hot & smooth LP transformed the Eagles sound @ 3rd Album
Joe Walsh - on any guitar, at any time
Elliot Easton - the right stuff

[sunvalleylaw]

I forgot about Santana. I like his early tones best as well. I did not know they were 335 based. I guess that is why my Vik likes his tunes!

[Fab4]

Don Felder - hot & smooth LP transformed the Eagles sound @ 3rd Album

Good call. I especially like Felder's messy-mashy fuzz lead on One of These Nights and the clean 335 on I Can't Tell You Why. The guy always matched tone, technique and taste to the song.

[wingsdad]

Good call. ......The guy always matched tone, technique and taste to the song.
:AOK: Well put, and that's what it's all about, Fab4. Another good example of Felder putting it together this way is the 'unplugged' Hotel California on the Hell Freezes Over cd..., but better yet, same track on the video of same ...just to watch his (and Walsh's) nylon string interpretation of the solo duet that takes the song out.

...Same reasoning I put Mike Campbell on this list.

[wingsdad]

I forgot about Santana. I like his early tones best as well. I did not know they were 335 based. I guess that is why my Vik likes his tunes!
Actually, not just a 335, which I saw him use live in '70 at a show while I was in college, but, an SG at Woodstock in '69..there's clips of that on YouTube, and with and LP at Montreux in '71. Later, he went to an Ibanez Artist, before Paul Reed Smith took that guitar and custom-cloned it for him.

The 335 gave him (or anyone) the acoustic resonance of the semi-hollow to surround the humbucker tones with a bit of natural feedback.

[Suhnton]

As far as rock goes, the guy I like the most is Scott Gorham from Thin Lizzy. I'm not sure if it's the mini-humbuckers or the red trousers that gives him his sound, but he gets a nice "woody" tone, as can be heard here (his lead part comes in at 5:45):

RZ9DrVqI2yE