Distribution of funds WRT guitars

[Eric***]

Some time ago, I read someone's comment on another forum about how so many people buy expensive guitars and then play them through cheap amps. I gave that some thought and realized that the guy had a good point: it's not uncommon for some people to buy a guitar for $1500 and play it through a $500 amp. Given that many would agree that an amp has the most significant impact on your tone, that's kind of strange, isn't it?

I'm certainly no exception to the rule. I may have some cheaper guitars, but I have at least one that's 2-3 times as expensive as my most pricey amp. If we're talking pedals, it's no question: my pedalboard is the most expensive of the 3 main things I use (guitar, pedals, amp).

Why do you think this happens? We might take amplification for granted, but spend more money on the things that make less of an impact. Has anyone else thought about this? Just some food for thought...

[Bookkeeper's Son]

Amps aren't as pretty as guitars. Phenomenon explained.

[bcdon***]

Perhaps it's because people do not see an amplifier as the instrument it truly is. My amps are my most expensive instruments and decidedly so. I wanted to pick one amp that I could never outgrow and that would give me more as I developed as a player.

[bcdon***]

Amps aren't as pretty as guitars. Phenomenon explained.

They can be...

[Commodore 64***]

The more I work on electric guitars and amps, the more I realize that the guitars, pretty much across the board, can all be made to play about the same. Which is to say that barring a twisted neck, I can make any guitar play as well as someone would like. I think that guitars differ mainly in construction. Solid body, chambered, hollow, semi-hollow; pickup type; and scale length. Other than that, I think most of the tone search is a load of hooey. The primary factor in a guitar is the set-up, and the neck profile preferred by the user. And the set-up is not really a big deal. Even make the nut is really straight forward once you do a couple.

I'm building a tele style guitar. I think the learning curve in building a guitar is way, way steeper. My first amp took a little troubleshooting, but at the very core of it, it's just a circuit. It works or it doesn't. Making a guitar takes so much individual effort, just to shape the neck, to sand each contour, and build the templates. Nowadays a lot of guitars are probably C and C milled, so this doesn't apply. I think you can take any Squier, Turser, Ibeenhad, Johnson and make it play as good as a Suhr, if you give it a fret level and a good set-up. You won't get the same attention to detail, fit and finish, but none of that effects the tone in any meaningful way that isn't absolutely dwarfed by the amp circuit. So for a guitar, if you wanna drop the scratch, you can get something uber customized, with cold rolled steel trem blocks and pressed saddles, etc. But you really aren't gaining much, IMHO. I just played a '69 Tele this weekend (same guy who has the ampeg), and I'd take my '94 MiM Squier Series Tele over it every single day and 2x on Sundays. Mojo in guitars is a pile of BS. It's wood wrapped in a plastic coating. There's no mojo in there. The mojo in a guitar is in the fingers and in how the player feels about his guitar. So that's tough to quantify. You can also probably gather that I'm not too keen on expensive guitars. I think about $500 will get you all you could ever need in a guitar, and $150-250 will also get you something today, that is more consistent in quality, and probably better too, than the stuff they built in the 50's and 60s. The $150 Turser is probably a better instrument than the one that Jimi Hendrix played. Seriously.

To the extent that you can define mojo at all, I think you can do it with an amp more than a guitar. You can tweak resistors to get different response, you can try different tubes to get different tone and response, you can vary all these things in a repeatable way. If you are patient enough, you can dial in any amp to what a player wants (provided they can communicate effectively what it is they want, and are open to an iterative approach).I've worked on a more than a few amps. I've built 1 from the ground up, and I have another one in progress. I can hear the difference in components, such as capacitors. (but the difference comes from the value of the cap, not the material). In an amp, certain fit and finish aspects do matter, like lead dress, transformer quality, and wire management.

I find leveling a fretboard to be a pretty simple undertaking compared to changing out tube sockets. So the amp ends up costing you more throughout its life. A friend just dropped off an old, old Ampeg for me to look at. It's not working right. It's got 7 or 8 tubes, IIRC, and it's gonna need a retube. A couple are gonna have to be NOS. It's gonna cost a couple hundred bucks in tubes, plus I gotta remove the death cap, replace the electrolytics, and wire it for 3 conductor. That's gonna cost some cash, too. On a guitar, you just need to change the strings, and if you play the living sh!t out of it, a refret. So in the end, I think you pay more for an amp.

What does this all mean? I have no idea, but surely I've laid out something worth discussing.

[Spudman***]

Plenty of pros are playing through budget amphs and sound just fine. An expensive amp just sounds different, but it's still an amph. You can still get screamin solos with either. Plenty of amps are inexpensive compared to the price of some guitars and they are good amps.

I saw Traci Gunns (L.A. Gunns) one night and later complimented him on how ballsy his guitar sounded. He said, "thanks" and when I asked him what he was playing through it was either a POD or a Rocktron, no amph. I was seriously stunned. That was my first exposure to modeling. The realization soon set in that you don't have to spend a bundle to get great tone. So therefore, I don't.

And like was mentioned...guitars are more sexy than amphs. I'd rather spend my money on sexy.

[Robert****]

Well I think this looks pretty cool...

But why does the top row have angled cabs? I don't know would be tall enough to hear the sound up there anyway!

[Bookkeeper's Son]

Those Boogie amps look like my kitchen chairs!

[bcdon***]

Those Boogie amps look like my kitchen chairs!

Wow, you have a lot of switches on your kitchen chairs! Wheel chairs?

[Tig***]

Wow, you have a lot of switches on your kitchen chairs! Wheel chairs?

I wish my chairs sounded like a Mark V.
Tone is in the seat! (um, hold on...)

[syo***]

Interesting this...

I think that the backwards and forwards of "what matters most" is fascinating. The debates between "Nitro" vs "Poly", Tubes" vs "SS", "Pickup" vs "Wood", or "Amp" vs "Guitar" etc. says more about us as human beings than about equipment. It's funny that "practice"/"talent" vs "no practice"/"no talent" is never debated because it's a given. As humans we are generally aspirational. We're always looking for that "thing" that makes things even better (especially when the solution seems to be much easier than "practice" ).

Personally on this one I lean towards Spud and another vote too for the sexy. But really I think a good (or especially, great) player adjusts their playing style to level of their equipment and can surprisingly pull more great tone out of cheap gear than I can out of the finest. I would say that it is important to buy guitars and amps that are competently made with durable, reliably functioning components and sometimes paying more helps to guarantee this. I am also sure, of course, that there are important differences between different amps and different guitars but this matters more or less depending on what kind of player you are and the style of music you play.

As to your original post, Eric, I also think it matters what one is doing with a $1,500 guitar and a $500 amp. If one is a bedroom player, that seems a perfectly reasonable combination. If you're a player of mellow jazz in an intimate venue you might want to re-evaluate your amph-ing purchasing.

[bcdon***]

As humans we are generally aspirational. We're always looking for that "thing" that makes things even better (especially when the solution seems to be much easier than "practice" )

Totally agree with this. There is only one way to sound good and that is to practise. I have no illusions that a nice amp will make me sound any better; in fact, the amp and all my gear suffers from one flaw: my playing. That said, I do hope to make it them sound better one day. I agree that guitars are sexier than amps, however I do stick by my assertion that amps are every bit an instrument that a guitar is.

[Ch0jin]

One other thing...

For me at least, buying expensive gear tended to quiet the voice in my head that kept whispering "dude, it's not you, it's that cheap guitar/amp. You would sound amazing with good gear"

Now, I knew then and know now that that voice is wrong, but it sure was persistent. Buying an expensive guitar (well a couple as it happens) took away the doubt, proving that any inadequacies were mine, not the gear. My main amp, whilst not Mark V money, did set me back around $1500 back in the early 90's (Peavey Ultra) so not a cheap amp, but at the time I bought it I could barely play a power chord. That was a whole lot of amp for someone so newb, but I figured (correctly as it seems) that it was an amp that would grow with me as a player.

And yeah, I'm with ya Don, I consider amps to be instruments too.

Edit: I should also point out that I agree with SYO too. My ZeroDot was considerably less expensive than my Matons, but as a well constructed guitar with great pickups, it's massively fun to play and sounds amazing! I have a Korean made 80's Squier with a ply body and bad frets and a weird crooked neck that I've never been able to get quite right. It's never felt nice to play, and never sounded good. It kind of put me off "Strat style" guitars to be honest. Then I got my ZeroDot and all of a sudden I'm loving that kind of guitar!

[deeaa*]

Bookkeeper had it right; amps just aren't sexy is a big part. And a super expensive amp may not have the qualities you find in a small one. Makes no sense to buy a Ferrari if you drive country roads; that's probably the main reason amps need not be so expensive. They don't really get any better with the price except considering some very specific uses and situations.
The bottom line is, for a nice rockin' driven lead tone, even a $30 Behringer can yield just as good a sound as rig a hundred times more expensive.

For home training, a home training amp is best. For live stage, you need a bigger one...but, I really don't know if money buys you any special tone there either, usually, for most people. And only if you gig often/for a living, you need especially good quality and trustworthiness.

If you want extreme metal, loud, you need an expensive amp usually, or suffer the noise and whatnot. Only something like a 5150 with a sturdy 4x12" cab may do.
If you want extreme bluesy lead guitar tones, you might want to spring for a top-of the line Fender or some handbuilt one.
If you play rootsy rock only, you probably want something like a 50W Marshall handwired.

But NONE of the examples above likely give the best possible tones for every use, or for a large variety of songs, and especially not for home use or easy transporting.
While loads of good amps give excellent, even quite on par tones, for a larger variety of needs and in a more convenient package.

These amps don't cost much, because there's not a lot of handworking involved; especially a tube amp is a very very simple machine after all.
Things like asking past $1000 for most any amp happens only because the makers think they CAN ask it, the amps are no better than somebody's $500 homebuilt one.

It is possible for people to put down a few thousand for a big quality rig, but very few need it. And you just can't justify, as an amp maker, very high prices for such simple machines, despite some try just that now and then.

[markb]

I'd rather play a Squier Affinity through a good Fender or Vox amp than a Custom Shop Fender through a department store practice amp. If I had to choose, that is. Fortunately the middle ground is full of excellent sounding choices these days. Once you have a decent guitar and a decent amp you're well along the road of diminishing returns by chasing the upgrade dragon. Nowadays you could easily do that for 500 quid without long hours searching eBay.

I find that the boutique thing gets silly. Most of the great 20th century sounds we regard as templates were made with standard equipment that anyone back in the day could walk into a shop and buy straight off the floor. Nowadays a lot of it is done in software. The same rules apply.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that we're at a point where you don't have to shell out huge sums for excellent guitar tone at any point in the signal chain.

[deeaa*]

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that we're at a point where you don't have to shell out huge sums for excellent guitar tone at any point in the signal chain.

Exactly what I always preach!

[Eric***]

I'd rather play a Squier Affinity through a good Fender or Vox amp than a Custom Shop Fender through a department store practice amp. If I had to choose, that is. Fortunately the middle ground is full of excellent sounding choices these days. Once you have a decent guitar and a decent amp you're well along the road of diminishing returns by chasing the upgrade dragon. Nowadays you could easily do that for 500 quid without long hours searching eBay.

I find that the boutique thing gets silly. Most of the great 20th century sounds we regard as templates were made with standard equipment that anyone back in the day could walk into a shop and buy straight off the floor. Nowadays a lot of it is done in software. The same rules apply.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that we're at a point where you don't have to shell out huge sums for excellent guitar tone at any point in the signal chain.

I think this is a fair summary, and roughly to the point of what I was thinking with the original post. I see a lot of people who buy boutique guitars and pedals, but they play them through average amps. It probably sounds just fine, but I would assume they're chasing a dragon as you say, so I'm not sure why they don't upgrade the thing that has a larger effect on tone -- the amp. It's kind of like your example with the the Squier Affinity and Vox, just on a much more expensive level.

But it's a hobby for most, and for that I guess people should do what makes them happy. I just like giving myself a shot in the arm every now and then to wake up the common sense part of my brain.

[Bookkeeper's Son]

I'm really impressed with the intelligent, level-headed responses to Eric's question. What with all the voodoo/mojo/BS stuff that I've read (mostly elsewhere), I've often thought that gear purchases would best be done blindfolded and with no knowledge whatsoever as to brand or price. As with many things, higher price doesn't necessarily mean better quality/performance, etc.. Humans are emotional creatures, and logic is often trumped by ego, insecurity, etc., and at that point all bets are off as to what a given person might think important compared to another. But I still think that people will generally tend to spend more on guitars than amps because the guitar is the up-front piece of gear that the player is actually holding, while the amp is a box that sits somewhere in the background.

[Tig***]

We are lucky to have some really nice guitar and amp choices in the low to middle price range, i.e., average gear. For most of us, this gear will not limit us, nor empty our bank accounts. I've had some crappy guitars, amps, and pedals, and those certainly limit the end results (tones) and ease of playing and learning. It is rare to find a poorly constructed guitar set up well enough to not hinder the player.

Mid-priced gear is our new sweet spot. I'm putting guitars and amps roughly between $300 to $1000 in this group. We get most of the useable, every day quality and playability of expensive gear in this range if we choose well. Anyone who owns a Suhr, Heritage or Collings guitar will confirm that middle priced guitars are not the same, but unlike years past we're not that far off, either. A well designed and decently tubed and speakered printed circuit board tube, solid state or hybrid amp can produce some impressive tones and touch sensitivity without going hand made, point to point.

Marketing to guitarists must be pretty easy. Throw in words like "tone", "vintage", "mojo", and you'll sell your wares. Still, we're not nearly as gullible as golfers and fashion trending women in this department.

Ah, but I'm preaching to the choir here!